Tucker , Archibald Norman , 1904-1980 , linguist

Archibald Norman Tucker was born in Cape Town on 10 March 1904. He was educated at South African College School. He obtained his MA from the University of Cape Town in 1926, his PhD from the University of London in 1929, and later also his DLit, in 1949.

He worked as Linguistic Expert of non-Arabic languages for the Sudan Government from 1929 to 1931. In 1932 he became Reader at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was an active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and a Conscientious Objector during World War II.

Much of his language work was concerned with orthographic research, which he undertook in both Uganda and Kenya (on Ganda and Kikuyu respectively). He organised and directed an orthography conference in Western Uganda in 1954, and, prior to that, in 1949-1951, he supervised a Bantu line expedition in the Belgian Congo for the International African Institute. Archibald Tucker was married. He died on 16 July 1980.

His publications include Suggestions for the Spelling of Transvaal Sesuto (1929); The Eastern Sudanic Languages, Vol. 1 (1940); Swahili Phonetics (1942); M. A. Bryan & A. N. Tucker, Distribution of the Nilotic ad Nilo-Hamitic Languages of Africa (1948); A Maasai Grammar with Vocabulary (1955); Linguistic Survey of the Northern Bantu Borderland, Vol. 4 (1957); A. N. Tucker & M. A. Bryan, Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa (1966); The Comparative Phonetics of the Suto-Chuana Group of Bantu Languages (1969); A Grammar of Kenya Luo (Dholuo) (1994); and Tribal Music and Dancing in the Southern Sudan (Africa), at Social and Ceremonial Gatherings.