Johan Storm

Johan Storm

Johan Storm , Johan Frederik Breda Storm, (born November 24, 1836 in Blakar in Lom , † October 26, 1920 in Kristiania ) was a Norwegian linguist.

Life

His parents were the pastor Ole Johan Storm (1806–1850) and his wife Hanna Jørgine Mathilde Breda (1815–69). On July 21, 1865 he married in Stavanger Louise Juliane Christiane Bruun (March 3, 1840-14 December 1927), daughter of pastor Christian Constantius Henrik Bruun (1812-1877) and his wife Christiane Plesner (1801-1885).

Storm grew up partly in Rendal, partly in Lardal. After the father's death, the mother and the children moved to Christiania. There he went to the cathedral school, where Knud Knudsen , whose sharpest linguistic opponent Storm later became, was a senior teacher, and in 1855 he passed the Artium exam. He began to study natural sciences, but then switched to philology and passed the state examination in 1864. For a few years he was a teacher at the Aars og Voss skole . From 1869 to 1870 he was a scholarship holder on a trip to Great Britain, France, Italy and Spain. In 1873 he became professor of Romance and English philology at Christiania University . He was particularly interested in phonetics . He was one of the first to make speaking and pronunciation a subject of instruction at the university. He spoke English without an accent like a local. His teaching method also led to the reform of the teaching of English and French in high schools. He was one of those who introduced the "Phonetic Direction" into European linguistics. His textbooks, which focused on speaking one language, have been translated into many languages. In many countries, French was taught according to his textbook.

Storm was also very familiar with Norwegian pronunciation, both in dialects and in the common language. After Knud Knudsen wrote his first systematic presentation of the rules for the distribution of the two Norwegian word tones in 1856, Storm went further and explored the musical nature of the intonation in the Scandinavian languages ​​in his article Tale og Accent i Forhold til Sang . In the 1880s he developed a phonetic alphabet for writing down dialects. It is still in use today with changes. For this work he traveled a lot in the country and examined many dialects. When he got to West Telemark he found the best pronunciation he had ever heard. Only a small part of his records have been published so far. His plan to write a Norwegian language story failed due to funding. But later he wrote in-depth studies on the Norwegian Bible language and the language of older and more recent fiction, especially the language of Ibsen . He was heavily involved in the language dispute at the time. He thought Ivar Aasen was a brilliant researcher, but did not think of Landsmål , which in his eyes was an arbitrarily and artificially composed dialect language and therefore would not prevail. He also had nothing to do with the “stylistically mixed language” that Knud Knudsen advocated. He said that in his unrealistic construction of language, Knudsen was going "straight ahead like a berserk", regardless of the obstacles that lay in the way. He particularly disliked the speed with which the reform process was being pushed forward. His most important contribution to the linguistic debate was his two-volume work on Norwegian orthography. He did not oppose Norwegianization as such, but he said that it has always been a dangerous experiment for the school to anticipate natural language development. That creates resistance, strife and division. He wanted a moderately reformed spelling that would fit into literature and the common language spoken every day.

In the later development of the textbooks, Storm was the loser. It was others, Moltke Moe and his successors, who determined the language policy of the future. But the linguistic policy change that the government made in the transition to the 21st century has rehabilitated Storm to a certain extent: the state-mandated Norwegianization had not produced the desired results.

Johan Storm was a member of the Videnskabs-Selskabet in Christiania (now the Norwegian Academy of Sciences ) and of many foreign scientific academies since 1872 . He was also an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh . In 1889 he became a first class knight of the St Olav order and in 1904 received the commander's cross.

Fonts

• "Tale and Accent i Forhold til Sang". (Speaking and accent in relation to the singing) In: Illustreret Nyhedsblad 9 No. 40, pp. 169–170 and No. 42, pp. 177–178. 1860
• De romanske Sprog and Folk. Skildringer fra en study trip with public scholarship . (The Romance languages ​​and peoples. Descriptions of a study trip with a public grant) 1871
• Remarques sur les voyelles atones du latin, des dialectes italiques et de l'italien . Paris 1873
• Om Tonefaldet (Tonelaget) i de Scandinavian Sprog . Reprint of the negotiations of Christiania Videnskabs-Selskab from 1874. 1875.
• Det norske Maalstræv . Reprint of Letterstedtske Nordisk Tidskrift 1, Stockholm 1878.
• Engelsk Filologi , 1879 (German edition Heilbronn 1881, 2nd edition in 2 volumes, Leipzig 1892–96)
• "K. Knudsen: Unorsk og norsk. ”(K. Knudsen: Un-Norwegian and Norwegian) In: Morgenbladet Nos. 36a, 42a, 43a, 62a and 63a. 1881
• Norvegia. Tidsskrift for det norske Folks Maal og Minder (Norvegia. Journal for the language and memories of the Norwegian people) (together with Moltke Moe), booklet. 1 (the only one that appeared), 1884
• Franske Taleøvelser. En systematisk Fremstilling af det franske Talesprog gjennem Samtaler af det daglige Liv, arranging efter grammars. Mellemtrin . (French language exercises. A systematic presentation of the French language through conversations of everyday life, arranged according to grammar. Intermediate level) Copenhagen 1887 (Danish edition Copenhagen 1887; Swedish edition Stockholm 1887; Dutch edition Groningen 1888; German edition Bielefeld / Leipzig 1888; Finnish edition Borgå 1889, English edition London / New York 1892)
• Det nynorske Landsmaal. En Undersøgelse . Copenhagen 1888 (preprint in Morgenbladet 1886)
• Norsk Sprogudvikling (language development of Norwegian) in Morgenbladet special issue 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 15, 17, 20 and 22nd 1895
• Norsk Sprog. Kraakemaal og Landsmaal (The Norwegian language. Gibberish and Landsmål). Copenhagen 1896
• Franske Taleøvelser. Høiere Trin (French language exercises. Advanced level) Copenhagen 1897 (Swedish edition Stockholm 1897)
• Norsk Retskrivning (Norwegian spelling) 2 vol. In 3, 1904–1906
• Ibsen and the norske Sprog. (Ibsen and the Norwegian language). In: Festschrift for Henrik Ibsen. Bergen 1898. pp. 147-205.
• Norsk Lydskrift med Omrids af Fonetiken (Norwegian phonetic transcription and outline of phonetics), 1908 (preprinted in Norvegia 1884, pp. 19–132.)
• Større fransk Syntax (Greater French Syntax) Vol. 1–3, 1911–1919.

Remarks

1. ↑ The "Examen artium" was the regular entrance examination for university, which required knowledge of Latin and Greek. So it corresponded to the Abitur, but was accepted by the university until 1883.

literature

• Finn-Erik Vinje: Johan Storm. In: Norsk biografisk leksikon , accessed on April 22, 2010.
• Andrew Robert Linn: Johan Storm: the greatest pràktikal liNgwist in dhi werld. Oxford 2004, ISBN 1405121521 .

Web links

• French Dialogues