Johan Ihre
Encyclopedia
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
philologist and historical linguist.
Ihre was born in Lund
Lund
-Main sights:During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the town was the seat of the archbishop, many churches and monasteries were built. At its peak, Lund had 27 churches, but most of them were demolished as result of the Reformation in 1536. Several medieval buildings remain, including Lund...
, son of the theologian Thomas Ihre and his spouse Brita Steuchia. After his father's death in 1720, Johan Ihre was raised in the house of his grandfather Archbishop
Archbishop of Uppsala
The Archbishop of Uppsala has been the primate in Sweden in an unbroken succession since 1164, first during the Catholic era, and from the 1530s and onward under the Lutheran church.- Historical overview :...
Mattias Stechius in Uppsala
Uppsala
- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...
, and studied at Uppsala University
Uppsala University
Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...
, where he completed his magister
Magister
Magister is Latin for "master" or "teacher." It may refer to:* The Magister , an academic degreePositions or titles* A magister equitum, or Master of the Horse...
degree in 1730. In 1730-1733 he studied abroad, in Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He was in 1734 appointed docent
Docent
Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...
in Uppsala, 1735 librarian at the University Library, and was from 1737 until his death holder of the Skyttean professorship in Eloquence and Government. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Letters
Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities
The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities also called simply the Royal Academy of Letters, abbreviated KVHAA is the Swedish royal academy for the Humanities.Its many publications include the archaeological and art historical journal Fornvännen, published since 1906.The Academy...
in 1755. He was secretary of the Royal Swedish Society of Sciences in Uppsala.
Ihre was the first scholar to recognize the sound change
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
of the Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
that was later to be elaborated on by Rasmus Christian Rask
Rasmus Christian Rask
Rasmus Rask was a Danish scholar and philologist.-Biography:...
and Jakob Grimm and now known after the latter as Grimm's law
Grimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
.
In 1737 the German philologist Johann Georg Wachter (1663–1757) published an etymological dictionary of the German language, Glossarium Germanicum. This book had a great influence on Johan Ihre: in 1769 he published, along the same lines as Wachter's work, a Swedish etymological dictionary. Ihre's etymological dictionary of Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
demonstrated the origin of words in Old Swedish
Old Swedish
Old Swedish is the name for two separate stages of the Swedish language that were spoken in the Middle Ages: Early Old Swedish , spoken from around 1225 until 1375, and Late Old Swedish , spoken from 1375 until 1526.Old Swedish developed from Old East Norse, the eastern dialect of Old Norse...
forms and compared them to cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s in other languages. Ihre thought, in accordance with the historical speculations common at the time and derived from Icelandic sources, that the language had been brought to the Nordic countries by Odin
Odin
Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
. Ihre was also the first to demonstrate that the text of the Codex argenteus
Codex Argenteus
The Codex Argenteus, "Silver Book", is a 6th century manuscript, originally containing bishop Ulfilas's 4th century translation of the Bible into the Gothic language. Of the original 336 folios, 188—including the Speyer fragment discovered in 1970—have been preserved, containing the...
manuscript in the Uppsala University Library is identical to the Gothic
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
Bible translation by Bishop Wulfila
Ulfilas
Ulfilas, or Gothic Wulfila , bishop, missionary, and Bible translator, was a Goth or half-Goth and half-Greek from Cappadocia who had spent time inside the Roman Empire at the peak of the Arian controversy. Ulfilas was ordained a bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia and returned to his people to work...
.
Selected bibliography of Ihre's works
- Utkast till föreläsningar öfwer swenska språket, 1745
- Fragmenta versonis Ulphilanae, continentia particulas..., 1763
- Swenskt dialect lexicon, 1766
- Anmärkningar, rörande Codex argenteus i Upsala, 1767
- Analecta Ulphilana, 1767-1769
- Glossarium Suiogothicum, 1769
- Scripta versionem Ulphilanam et linguam Moeso-Gothicam illustrantia, 1773