- Jakob Jakobsen
Infobox Person
name = Jákup Jakobsen
image_size =
caption =
birth_name =
birth_date =February 22 1864
birth_place =Tórshavn ,Faroe Islands
death_date = death date and age|1918|8|15|1864|2|22
death_place =
residence =
nationality = flagicon|Faroe Islands Faroese
known_for =
education =Philologist
occupation =
title = Dr. phil.Dr. phil. Jakob (properly Jákup) Jakobsen, (*
22 February 1864 inTórshavn ,Faroe ; †15 August 1918 inCopenhagen ), was a Faroeselinguist as well as a scholar ofliterature . He was the first Faroese person to earn adoctoral degree . The subject of his doctoral thesis was theNorn language inShetland .Life
Jakob Jakobsen's parents were Hans Nicolai Jacobsen from Torshavn, and Johanne Marie Hansdatter from
Sandoy . Jakob was the youngest of three children, having two older sisters. The father H. N. Jacobsen, earned his living as abookbinder as well as running abookshop in Tórshavn. The original book shop was in the old town, but H. N. Jacobsen moved the shop in 1918, to a central location further uptown, where it still stands today, retaining its traditional faroese grass roof. Founded in 1865,H. N. Jacobsens Bókahandil [ [http://bokhandil.fo/ HNJ Bókahandil Tórshavn Føroyar Faroe Islands føroyskar bøkur føroyskt mentan bókmentir ] at bokhandil.fo] is one of the oldest shops still in business in theFaroe Islands today.Jakob Jakobsen went to the “realskolen” school in Torshavn, where he showed a natural talent for learning languages. At the age of thirteen he went to school in Denmark and finished college in
Herlufsholm in 1883. In 1891 he graduated with Danish as his main subject and French andLatin as subsidiary subjects. In 1897 he got a doctor degree with his work “det norrøne sprog på Shetland” (the Norn language in Shetland). Later in life, one of Jakobsen's sisters played a great role in her brother's life in Copenhagen; and after his death, she also translated his Shetland works into English, in accordance with Jakobsen's own plans.Jakobsen and Faroese
J. Jakobsen’s work within the field of Faroese
folklore and oralpoetry played an important role in the rise of modern Faroese written literature. This is the case most of all with his collection of Faroese legends and folktales: Færøske Folkesagn og Æventyr. He looked upon folk tales as a kind of fictional literature, while the legends to him were a kind of source about early Faroese history. He also collected oral poetry, worked with Faroeseplace-names and created manyneologisms . He was the first to point out some Celtic place-names in the Faroes, and is also responsible for the grammar section and texts-samples in Færøsk Anthologi from 1891 (edited byV. U. Hammershaimb )In 1898 J. Jakobsen created a new Faroese
orthography based on the new science:Phonetics . The principle of the 1898 orthography is that there must be a one to one correspondence betweenphoneme and letter, and that the written language should be easy to learn by children. Due to politicalcontroversy , the proposal was abandoned.Jakobsen and Shetland
Dr. Jakob Jakobsen is a key figure in
Shetland 'sculture .
AsJohn J. Graham writes in his preface to the 2nd edition, his "Dictionary of the Norn Language inShetland is the unrivalled source-book of information on the origins and usage of the Shetland tongue. Based on Jakobsen's fieldwork in Shetland during 1893-95 it first appeared in Danish in four volumes between 1908 and 1921, and was subsequently published in English in two volumes, 1928 and 1932. The Dictionary has established itself internationally as a major work of scholarship in Scandinavian philology." In 1985 TheShetland Folk Society , of which Graham was President at the time, succeeded in finding funds to reprint the two volume English edition in facsimile.When Jakobsen left Faroe for
Leith nearEdinburgh , his only knowledge of the language of Shetland was drawn fromThomas Edmondston 's glossary and those parts ofGeorge Stewart 's "Shetland Fireside Tales" that are written in dialect. In Edinburgh he metGilbert Goudie , and there he read "a valuable manuscript supplement" to Edmondston's work written byThomas Barclay . During his fieldwork in the isles, he interviewed a large number of Shetlandic speakers and scholars, includingHaldane Burgess ,James Stout Angus ,John Irvine , Robert Jamieson (1827-1899),James Inkster ,John Nicolson , andLaurence Williamson .Jakobsen's correspondence with Goudie was edited by
E. S. Reid Tait and published in 1953. In 1981,Roy Grønneberg published a study entitled "Jakobsen and Shetland".References
* "The Dialect and Place Names of Shetland. Two Popular Lectures", Lerwick: T. & J. Manson, 1897, 1926; reprinted as "The Place Names of Shetland", 1936 London/Copenhagen; reprinted 1993,
Shetland Library
* "An etymological dictionary of the Norn language in Shetland", London, 1928-1932; reprinted Lerwick: The Shetland Folk Society, 1985
* "Greinir og ritgerðir", HNJ. Tórshavn 1957.
* This article is based on http://shetlopedia.com/Jakob_Jakobsen aGFDL wiki.External links
*
John J. Graham 's poem to Jakob Jakobsen is [http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/Stella/STARN/poetry/jacob.htm here]*
H. N. Jacobsens Bókahandil ´s Homepage is [http://bokhandil.fo/ here]Larsen, Kaj. 1991. Hin fyrsti málreinsarin. "Málting 9:12-19"Larsen, Kaj. 1994. Stavsetingaruppskot Jakobs Jakobsens. "Varðin 61:7-41"Petersen Hjalmar P. 2007. Jakobsen's Orthography from 1889. To appear in a Conference book on Jakobsen.
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