Biography
Rohlfs was born in Berlin. His main interest was the languages and dialects spoken in Southern Italy and he travelled extensively in this region. He studied the Griko language (a Greek dialect still spoken in a few places in Salento and in south Calabria) and found several indications suggesting that Griko is a direct descendant of the language originally spoken by the Greek colonists of Magna Grecia. He first advanced this theory in his book Griechen und Romanen in Unteritalien (1924). He also published two complete vocabularies of the dialects spoken in Calabria (1938-1939) and in Salento (1956-1961).
His main work is considered to be his Historical Grammar of the Italian Language and its Dialects (Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten, 1949-1954). He received honorary degrees from the University of Calabria in Cosenza and the University of Salento in Lecce.
Read more about this topic: Gerhard Rohlfs
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)