James Evans (missionary)
James Evans (born January 18, 1801 in Kingston upon Hull in Great Britain , † November 23, 1846 in Keelby , Great Britain) was a Methodist missionary and pastor in Canada and an amateur linguist .
Evans was born in Kingston upon Hull, Great Britain, and emigrated to Canada in 1820. He proselytized on Hudson Bay and invented his own script for the language of the Ojibwe tribe in 1840. Evans experimented briefly with the Latin alphabet , then gave it in favor of a syllabary , he probably from when Pitman - shorthand was inspired. This font consisted of nine characters that could be rotated in four directions to represent the various vowels. He later modified the script slightly so that it could also be used for the language of the Cree tribe. Both scripts were quickly adopted by the Indians (see Cree script ).
Web links
- Literature by and about James Evans in the catalog of the German National Library
- James Evans . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Evans, James |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Methodist missionary and pastor in Canada and an amateur linguist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 18, 1801 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kingston upon Hull , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 23, 1846 |
| Place of death | Keelby , UK |