Rasmus Christian Rask
Encyclopedia
Odense
The city of Odense is the third largest city in Denmark.Odense City has a population of 167,615 and is the main city of the island of Funen...
on the Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
island of Funen
Funen
Funen , with a size of 2,984 km² , is the third-largest island of Denmark following Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy, and the 163rd largest island of the world. Funen is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 454,358 inhabitants . The main city is Odense, connected to the...
- 14 November 1832, Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
) was a Danish scholar and philologist.
Biography
Rask studied at the University of CopenhagenUniversity of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
and at once showed remarkable talent for the acquisition of languages. In 1808 he was appointed assistant keeper of the university library
Library
In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...
and some years afterwards professor of literary history. In 1811 he published in Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
his Introduction to the Grammar of the Icelandic and other Ancient Northern Languages from printed and manuscript materials accumulated by his predecessors in the same field of research.
The reputation which Rask thus acquired recommended him to the Arnamagnæan Institution
Arnamagnæan Collection
The Arnamagnæan Institute is a teaching and research institute established in 1956 to further the study of the manuscripts in the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, the collection bequeathed by the Icelandic scholar and antiquarian Árni Magnússon to the University of Copenhagen in 1730.On July 1,...
, by which he was employed as editor of the Icelandic Lexicon (1814) of Björn Halldórsson, which had long remained in manuscript. Rask visited Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, where he remained from 1813 to 1815, mastering the language and familiarizing himself with the literature, manners, and customs of Iceland. To the interest with which they inspired him may probably be attributed the establishment at Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, early in 1816, of the Icelandic Literary Society
Icelandic Literary Society
The Icelandic Literary Society , founded in 1816, is a society dedicated to promoting and strengthening Icelandic language, literature and learning....
, of which he was the first president.
In October 1816, Rask left Denmark on a literary expedition financed by the king, to prosecute inquiries into the languages of the East, and collect manuscripts for the university library at Copenhagen. He proceeded first to Sweden
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....
, where he remained two years, in the course of which he made an excursion into Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
to study the language. Here he published, in Swedish, his Anglo-Saxon Grammar in 1817. In 1818, there appeared at Copenhagen, in Danish, an Essay on the Origin of the Ancient Scandinavian or Icelandic Tongue, in which he traced the affinity of that idiom to the other European languages, particularly Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
.
In the same year, he brought out the first complete editions of Snorri
Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...
's Edda
Edda
The term Edda applies to the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, both of which were written down in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching into the Viking Age...
and Sæmundr
Sæmundr fróði
Sæmundr Sigfússon was an Icelandic priest and scholar. Sæmundr is known to have studied abroad. Previously it has generally been held that he studied in France, but modern scholars rather believe his studies were carried out in Franconia. In Iceland he founded a long-lived school at Oddi...
's Edda (more commonly known as the Poetic or Elder Edda), in the original text, along with Swedish translations of both Eddas. From Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, he went in 1819, to St Petersburg, where he wrote, in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, a paper on "The Languages and Literature of Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland," in the sixth number of the Vienna Jahrbücher. From Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, he proceeded through Tartary
Tartary
Tartary or Great Tartary was a name used by Europeans from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the Great Steppe, that is the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean inhabited mostly by Turkic, Mongol...
into Persia, and resided for some time at Tabriz
Tabriz
Tabriz is the fourth largest city and one of the historical capitals of Iran and the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Situated at an altitude of 1,350 meters at the junction of the Quri River and Aji River, it was the second largest city in Iran until the late 1960s, one of its former...
, Teheran, Persepolis
Persepolis
Perspolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire . Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid...
, and Shiraz
Shiraz, Iran
Shiraz is the sixth most populous city in Iran and is the capital of Fars Province, the city's 2009 population was 1,455,073. Shiraz is located in the southwest of Iran on the Roodkhaneye Khoshk seasonal river...
. In about six weeks, he made himself sufficiently master of Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
to be able to converse freely.
In 1820, he embarked at Bushire for Bombay; and during his residence there he wrote, in English, "A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Zend Language" (Trans. Lit. Soc. of Bombay, vol. iii., reprinted with corrections and additions in Trans. R. As. Soc.). From Bombay he proceeded through India to Ceylon, where he arrived in 1822, and soon afterwards wrote, in English, "A Dissertation respecting the best Method of expressing the Sounds of the Indian Languages in European Characters," in the Transactions of the Literary and Agricultural Society of Colombo. Rask returned to Copenhagen in May 1823, bringing a considerable number of Oriental manuscripts, Persian, Zand, Pali
Páli
- External links :* *...
, Sinhalese, and others, with which he enriched the collections of the Danish capital. He died in Copenhagen on the 14th of November 1832, at Badstuestraede 17, where a plaque commemorating him is found.
During the period between his return from the East and his death, Rask published in his native language a Spanish Grammar (1824), a Frisian Grammar (1825), an Essay on Danish Orthography (1826), a Treatise respecting the Ancient Egyptian Chronology and an Italian Grammar (1827), and the Ancient Jewish Chronology previous to Moses (1828). He also edited an edition of Schneider's Danish Grammar for the use of Englishmen (1830), and superintended the English translation of his Anglo-Saxon Grammar by Thorpe (1830).
He was the first to point out the connection between the ancient Northern and Western/Eastern Germanic languages on the one hand, and the Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
, Slavonic, Greek, and Latin languages on the other; and he also deserves credit for having had the original idea of what is now called "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...
" for the transmutation of consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s in the transition from the old Indo-European languages to Teutonic
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...
, although he only compared Teutonic and Greek, Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
being at the time unknown to him.
In 1822, he was master of no fewer than twenty-five languages and dialects, and he is stated to have studied twice as many. His numerous philological manuscripts were transferred to the Royal Library at Copenhagen. Rask's Anglo-Saxon, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
and Icelandic Grammars were brought out in English editions by Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon.-Biography:After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, he returned to England in 1830, and in 1832 published an English version of Caedmon's metrical paraphrase of portions of the...
, Repp, and Dasent
George Webbe Dasent
Sir George Webbe Dasent was a translator of folk tales and contributor to The Times.Dasent was born 22 May 1817 at St. Vincent, West Indies, the son of the attorney general, John Roche Dasent...
, respectively. Karl Verner
Karl Verner
Karl Verner was a Danish linguist. He is remembered today for Verner's law, which he discovered in 1875.Verner, whose interest in languages was stimulated by reading about the work of Rasmus Christian Rask, began his university studies in 1864. He studied Oriental, Germanic and Slavic languages,...
was one of the later philologists inspired by Rask's work.
External links
- Rask's Singalesisk Skriftlære online
- Google book link to Anvisning till Isländskan eller Nordiska Fornspråket