François-Urbain Domergue

François-Urbain Domergue (24 March 1745 in Aubagne – 29 May 1810 in Paris) was a French grammarian and journalist known for his Jacobin ideals .

Biography

Born in 1745 to an apothecarist, Domergue studied in his hometown of Aubagne and later at an oratory college in Marseille. He became a teacher in Lyon, and married a surgeon's daughter and released the first edition of his "Grammaire françoise simplifiée" ("Simplified French grammar") in 1778. In 1784 he founded the "Journal de la Langue Françoise" ("Journal of the French Language"), which had among his objectives to fight against neologisms. After that book didn't sell well, he went to Paris and established a society of amateur French linguists. He had his "Grammaire simplifiée" book re-edited, collaborated in the "Journal général du soir, de politique et de littérature" and rereleased his "Journal de la Langue Françoise" book. He became grammar professor at the École centrale des Quatre-Nations, and later chaired the humanities department at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. He was elected to Seat 1 of the Académie française in 1803, and helped commission the Academy's dictionary.

External links

* [http://www.academie-francaise.fr/immortels/base/academiciens/fiche.asp?param=292 Biography from l'Académie Française, in French]

References

"This article draws heavily on the article in the French-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of 7 Nov 2006.