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Sir William Jones (1746 - 1794) | ||
Tags: Hyperglot | College/University | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6664 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 1 of 3 02 November 2011 at 9:32pm | IP Logged |
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I haven't been able to find an existing thread on Sir William Jones in the Polyglots-forum, but I think he definitely deserves one.
According to Wikipedia: "The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, learning Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age.[1] By the end of his life he knew thirteen languages thoroughly and another twenty-eight reasonably well, making him a hyperpolyglot." He is famous for claiming that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin share a common root, which can be seen as a starting point of historical linguistics. I also remember having read in a textbook that he seems to have been modest about his language skills, so I assume "reasonably well" actually means "reasonably well" in the description above, but unfortunately I can't remember where I read this. Does anybody have more information about the languages he knew? Edited by Fasulye on 19 November 2011 at 9:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 3 19 November 2011 at 9:07pm | IP Logged |
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For those readers who want to read more background information about him, here is my Wikipedia link:
Wikipedia: Biography of Sir William Jones Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 3 of 3 20 November 2011 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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There exist several biographies of him. Some examples:
Garland Cannon - The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics Michael J. Franklin - 'Orientalist Jones': Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746-1794 There is also a compendium of his work as print on demand: William Jones - The Works of Sir William Jones. 13 vols. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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