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Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen describes him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
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culture · Danish linguist (1860–1943) · linguist · Esperantist · autobiographer · pedagogue · writer · university teacher · Idist · scholar of English · philosopher · opinion journalist · also Otto Jespersen, Jens Otto Harry Jespersen, Otto Espersen, Jespersen
Born 16 July 1860 · Died 30 April 1943 · Q23870
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2023· 1 entry
1997· 1 entry
“Christopher Hitchens on Diana, Princess of Wales, the Royal Family, Dodi Fayed & Muslim Law”
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1943· 1 entry
Died 1943-04-30.
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1942· 1 entry
Jespersen became ill in December 1942; he died on 30 April 1943, and his urn was interred in a cemetery at Helsingør.
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1934· 1 entry
Again moved, to Lundehave, a large house in the outskirts of Helsingør, provided by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters for a distinguished academician
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1930· 1 entry
Co-chaired the first International Congress of Linguists in The Hague in 1928, and presided over the fourth in Copenhagen in 1936
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1927· 1 entry
Awarded doctor honoris causa from the University of Paris (1927).
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1925· 4 entries
Awarded honorary doctor of the University of St Andrews (1925).
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Following his resolve not to continue after reaching 65, in order to help make way for younger scholars
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Jespersen met Alice Morris, a wealthy cofounder (and lasting financial supporter) of the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA)
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Jespersen remained active in the international linguistic community
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1921· 1 entry
“De to hovedarter af grammatiske forbindelser”
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1920· 1 entry
Career landmark: rector (1920–1921).
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1914· 1 entry
Made further recommendations: that Denmark should have more than one university (its second would only arrive in 1928), that a Faculty of Divinity did not belong in a modern university, that there should be financial
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1911· 1 entry
Published an article in the newspaper Politiken describing poor conditions for academic work (serious underfunding, and the lack of a compulsory retirement age for professors), and also how he had got his wife to prom
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1910· 1 entry
Awarded honorary doctorate from Columbia University (1910).
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1909· 1 entry
Karl Brugmann listed it among six "indispensable books for a first approach to [linguistics]"
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1908· 1 entry
And which since then has been very often quoted by Idists: That international language is best which in every point offers the greatest facility to the greatest number (modelled, of course, on Hutcheson's and Bentham's f
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1907· 1 entry
Louis Couturat called a meeting of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language to decide on a single language for recommendation for international use
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1906· 2 entries
Awarded Volney Prize (1906).
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Within the booklet Modersmålets Fonetik ("Phonetics of the mother tongue")
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1904· 1 entry
And in 1909–1910 at the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University (New York), the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts)
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1901· 2 entries
Awarded Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog (1901).
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To Ermelundsly, a large house in Jægersborg, near Gentofte
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1887· 2 entries
Jespersen passed Skoleembedseksamen
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Soon after passing the Skoleembedseksamen, Jespersen went to London, where he met the phoneticians Wilhelm Viëtor, Alexander Ellis and Henry Sweet
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1886· 2 entries
(and elaborated in his 1901 book Sprogundervisning, translated as How to Teach a Foreign Language, 1904), Jespersen argued for the following principles in language teaching:
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Jespersen, August Western and Johan August Lundell cofounded a Scandinavian group for a revitalization of language teaching, naming the group "Quousque Tandem" after Wilhelm Viëtor's pseudonym as author of the 1882 pamph
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1884· 1 entry
Their correspondence quickly became a lively discussion (about two hundred letters and postcards survive) of such matters as second language education and phonetic scripts; it was cut short in 1886 when Franke succumbed
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1881· 1 entry
Allowed Jespersen to shift his focus completely to languages
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1879· 1 entry
Johan Storm devised Norvegia for Norwegian in 1884); and Jespersen devised a system, Dania, for the phonetic transcription of Danish (1890), which has remained in use for philological, dialectological and lexicographic w
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1877· 2 entries
When he was 17, initially studying law but not abandoning his language studies
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Studied at Frederiksborg Gymnasium og HF (1877).
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1866· 2 entries
The Société de Linguistique de Paris banned communications about the subject
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“several types of glottogenetic hypotheses”
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1860· 1 entry
Born 1860-07-16.
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