Søren Egerod

Søren Christian Egerod (born July 8, 1923 in Copenhagen (Brønshøj); † April 21, 1995 ibid) was a Danish linguist , sinologist and professor of East Asian languages at the University of Copenhagen from 1958 until his retirement in 1993.

Live and act

He was the son of the church teacher and later headmaster Oluf Carl Egerod (1888-1968) and his wife Ellen Eugenie Kierulf Abrahamsen (1890-1980). Egerod first visited the metropolitan cities in Struenseegade ( Nørrebro northwest in Copenhagen). Already at that time he was interested in languages. So he studied Sanskrit with great interest. In 1945 he passed the preparatory tests in Classical Philology and so he completed the fil.kand in 1948 . at the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala in Sinology , Ancient Greek and Sanskrit . In 1952 he received the academic degree of fil.lic. for Sinology at Stockholm University and in 1956 he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD from the University of Copenhagen. In addition to this formal career, he continued to study classical philology.

In 1945 Egerod went to Paris for a year , where he continued his sinological studies and also began to occupy himself with general linguistics. There he was a student of Paul Demiéville at the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes . After his stay in France he enrolled again at Stockholm University in 1946 and became a student of Bernhard Karlgren .

In 1948, Egerod was a member of the Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship . He used the scholarship to expand his knowledge of the Chinese language, Chinese linguistics, Chinese dialects and poetry . He stayed in China and the United States of America for a total of four years. In 1956, Egerod received a Guggenheim scholarship .

Because of his criticism of the Chinese government after the Cultural Revolution , he was denied access to the country until 1970 . Instead, he studied Chinese in Taiwan and other countries in Southeast Asia.

Søren Egerod enjoyed great respect in the international research community. This was not only due to his extensive and well-founded publications, but also to his work as a teacher, consultant and lecturer. His time at Berkeley , visiting professorships, countless lectures, and many other activities have helped him maintain an outstanding reputation around the world. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lund and was commander of the Order of Dannebrogorden . In addition, he was one of the few who, over time, were able and taken seriously to criticize Noam Chomsky directly.

He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences (since 1971), the Norwegian Academy of Sciences (since 1986) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences .

Works (selection)

Atayal-English Dictionary. (Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph), Routledge / Curzon, 1980, ISBN 0-7007-0117-6
The Lungtu dialect: a descriptive and historical study of a south Chinese idiom. Ejnar Munksgaard, 1956
Far Eastern Languages. In: Sydney M. Lamb; E. Douglas Mitchell: Leap from Some Common Source. Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages. Stanford University Press, 1991.

Web links

Literature by and about Søren Egerod in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Egerod, Søren
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Egerod, Søren Christian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Danish linguist, sinologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	July 8, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH	Copenhagen
DATE OF DEATH	April 21, 1995
Place of death	Copenhagen

[1] Robert Bauer: Prof. Søren Christian Egerod. Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, Année 1995, Volume 24 Numéro 24-2 pp. 283-286

[2] Dansk Biografisk Leksikon