Name Ida Ward | ||
Died 1949, Guildford, United Kingdom Books Practical Phonetics for Students of African Languages | ||
Ida Caroline Ward (4 October 1880, Bradford – 10 October 1949, Guildford) was a British linguist working mainly on African languages who did influential work in the domains of phonology and tonology. Her 1933 collaboration with Diedrich Hermann Westermann, Practical Phonetics for Students of African languages, was reprinted many times. African languages she worked on include Efik (1933), Igbo (1936, 1941), Mende (1944), and Yoruba (published posthumously in 1952).
Ida Ward was the eighth child of a Yorkshire wool merchant. After taking her B.Litt degree at Durham University, she taught in secondary schools in the north of England and in London. From 1919 to 1932 she worked at University College London with the famous phonetician Daniel Jones; in 1932 she moved on to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, becoming a professor in 1944.