May 30, 2012

JOHANN CHRISTOPH ADELUNG (1774)

One of the most influential German-language scholars before Jacob Grimm; his grammars, dictionary, and works on style helped to standardize the language, establish its principles of spelling, and refine its idiom.


He engaged in private research from 1761 to 1787, when he became principal librarian to the Elector of Saxony at Dresden, a post he retained to the end of his life.


Adelung´s Versuch eines vollständigen Grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches der hoch-deutschen Mundart (1774-86; "Attempt at a Complete Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of mate knowledge of the history of dialects basic to modern German. At the time of his death, he was still at work on Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde (3 vol., 1806-17; "Mithridates or General Linguistics"), in which he affirmed the relation of Sanskrit and the major European languages and also collected the Lord´s Prayer in some 500 languages and dialects.

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