Hans Ross

Hans Ross

Hans Ross , Hans Matthias Elisæus Ross (born April 14, 1833 in Holum (today Mandal ), † July 16, 1914 in Kristiania ) was a Norwegian linguist.

Life

youth

His parents were the pastor Hans Christian Ross (1797–1872) and his wife Magdalene Cathrine Edle Meyer (1798–1867). He remained unmarried.

Ross was the first to continue the work of Ivar Aasen . He was born 20 years after Aasen and had a different social and linguistic background: Aasen was a farmer's son from Østra, Ross a pastor's son from Mandal. The family came from Scotland.

He attended elementary school in Mandal and the cathedral school in Kristiansand . He studied theology and passed the exam in 1855. At the cathedral school he got to know Aasen's work from his teacher Christian Thistedahl. This stimulated him to study language. He was a member of the “Døleringen” circle around AO Vinje , who praised simple country life as an ideal.

After graduating, Ross worked as an assistant teacher at the elementary school in Mandal for a year. In the winter of 1856/1857 he stayed in Germany to learn German. Then he started as a language teacher in Christiania. He didn't want to be a clergyman. From 1859 to 1860 he was in Great Britain to study English. There he also studied phonetics. In 1873 his textbook of the English language appeared.

Career

Ross and Aasen met for the first time in 1857. After that, they met more often. Ross started collecting words in Sørlandet . From 1867 to 1869 he received a university scholarship for his collecting activities. He then ran the collection at his own expense until 1874. From 1877 he received 2,000 crowns from Storting, and from 1880 even 2,400 crowns. At the instigation of Johan Sverdrup , he was to become professor of the Norwegian vernacular in 1880. But the university, especially professors Sophus Bugge and Johan Storm , rejected him in their statement because he used Landsmål . When Sverdrup became Minister of State, he started the appointment again. But Ross refused, and Moltke Moe got the chair. In return, Ross received 3,500 crowns a year for his research.

Ross also received support for the printing of a Norwegian dictionary, which was published in leaps and bounds from 1890 to 1895. The dictionary was supposed to be a supplement to Aasen's dictionary, but in comparison to his dictionary it had many more words because he had visited many places in the country for which Aasen had not had time. He also recorded swear words that Aasen had avoided. Both also had different concepts: Aasen wanted to present the most important foundations of the Norwegian language in a standardized form, Ross wanted to bring as many words as possible that allowed a look at life and culture in the settlements. His dictionary received further supplementary volumes later, in the 1971 edition there are six. One by Ross and one by Sophus Bugge appeared together with the main work. Four were added by Ross from 1902 to 1913. The “supplementary part” to Ivar Aasen's dictionary was thus far more extensive than his work. Despite the admiration for Aasen, he did not stick to its spelling consistently, but based on the actual pronunciation. So he became a role model for Arne Garborg and a forerunner of " Midlandsmål ", a Central Norwegian language variant.

In 1868 he was a co-founder of “Det norske Samlaget” (The Norwegian Society) and published many writings on Landsmål. In a lecture to teachers in 1870, he compared the origins of the Norwegian language with similar movements in the rest of Europe. He insisted that the Danish and Norwegian languages ​​could not grow together into a single language, because the grammatical structure constitutes the essence of the language and this is very different. Nowhere is there such a mixed language. He was also a follower of the young grammatical doctrine which he described in his work Race. Nation. Sprog (1909) represented. He was also influenced by Friedrich Max Müller in Oxford and believed that the language resembled a plant that was growing.

Works (selection)

• Europe as it ought to be at the end of 1861 . London 1860
• Lauvduskar, samla and utgjevne av Hans Ross . 1867
• Lauvduskar. Samling af ymse Smaastykke . 6 volumes, 1867–1887
• Lærebog i Engelsk, nærmest for Middelskolen , 2 volumes, 1872–1873
• A suction bundle . 1869
• Norske Viser and Stev . 1869
• Maalreisningen her hjemme, belyst fra Udlandet . Stavanger 1878
• Samlinger til den norske Ordbog , 1883
• Norsk Ordbog. Tillæg til 'Norsk Ordbog' af Ivar Aasen . 1895
• “Lisler”. Causerier . 1900
• Norske Bygdemaal . Volume 1-17. Kristiania videnskapsselskaps scrifter. 1905-1909
• Race. Nation. Sprog . 1909

Remarks

1. ↑ Christian Thistedahl (1813-1876) was a teacher at the cathedral school in Kristiansand. He was fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and also made a translation of the Old Testament that became the basis of the 1891 translation. Ross mainly learned Hebrew from him.
2. ↑ "Døleringen" was a group of radical academics who rallied around AO Vinje , who published the magazine Døle (valley dwellers, simple, uncouth people) with almost exclusively their own texts, which were written in a Danish-Norwegian mixed language, but later joined borrowed the language of Ivar Aasen . They raved about the simple country life. The circle included Carl and Hagbard Berner , Hans Ross, Ernst and Ossian Sars, and now and then Ivar Aasen .

literature

• Kjell Venås: Article “Hans Ross” in: Norsk biografisk leksikon , accessed on February 19, 2010.