How many languages did Leibniz speak?
score:12
Among his other accomplishments, Leibniz was one of the pioneers of what we today call Linguistics. This means he studied a lot of languages, but would have had a smaller set he actually was good enough to communicate in. Given this spectrum of competency, it would probably be best to classify languages he "knew" by how he used them.
Languages he actually wrote in:
- Latin (most of his work)
- French (A lot of his philosophical work)
- German (his family journal. Almost certainly his native tongue)
- English (some essays on Hebrew)
- Italian
- Dutch
Languages he likely knew and/or proclaimed expertise in
- Classical Chinese (He wrote extensively about it)
- Sanscrit
- Hebrew (Correctly refuted the idea that it was the original language of humankind)
- "Slavic Languages"
Languages he had some exposure to:
- Classical Greek
Languages he's reported to have known in some way, but I so far haven't been able to track down reliable references for.
- Albanian
Upvote:5
This post is intended as a 'supplement' to T.E.D.'s, filling in some details on when and how he learnt various languages.
Until the age of six, when his father died, Leibniz spoke German at home. At seven he began to teach himself Latin using illustration and a work by Livy to help him. At either nine or twelve (depending on which source you believe), he started teaching himself Greek (classical rather than modern), though by this time he was already at a school where pupils were only allowed to speak Latin and Greek. Later, he read Aristotle in Greek. He also wrote and recited poems in Latin as a child, and continued to do so for the rest of his life.
At the University of Leipzig,
Among the other topics which were included in this two year general degree course were rhetoric, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.
According to Kato Lomb (herself a polyglot) in Harmony of Babel, Leibniz
wrote his doctoral dissertation in Latin, his historical treatises in English, and his books on theology in French. He agitated in German for rapprochement toward France.
Throughout his life, most of Leibniz's correspondence (he had hundreds of correspondents) was written in Latin and French, with a small amount in German. On German,
Leibniz, unlike many of his contemporaries, wrote German clearly and well, and he considered its mastery essential to the progress of modern European society....it is ironic that his work arguing for the use of the German language was in fact written in Latin.
He polished his French during his time in Paris, before he went to work for Duke Johann Friedrich (of Brunswick - Lüneburg - Calenberg) as Privy Counsellor at a court where the language was French.
Leibniz spent quite some time in England, meeting many people there, so it is not unlikely that he also spoke English at least reasonably well. He also spent over a year in Italy, his knowledge of Italian demonstrated by this story which he liked to tell:
There is a story from that period, which Leibniz was fond of repeating. While he was crossing alone in a small boat from Venice to Mesola in Ferrara, a violent storm blew up. The ship's pilot proposed to throw Leibniz overboard and keep his possessions and money. As justification, the Italian pilot asserted (since he did not believe he would be understood by Leibniz, a German) that he considered him the cause of the storm because he was a heretic. Whereupon Leibniz brought out a rosary he had taken with him as a precaution and pretended to use it devoutly. This artifice succeeded; a sailor told the pilot that since Leibniz was not a heretic, it would not be right to throw him overboard.
For many years, Leibniz communicated (in Latin) with Jesuits priests in China as he was deeply interested in Chinese thought, culture and language, all three of which he devoted a considerable amount of study time to. In addition this, as a linguist with a particular interest in constructing an artificial language, Leibniz studied a variety of languages, including Welsh, Danish and Sanskrit (but there is no firm evidence that wrote in or spoke any of these).
Other sources:
Benson Mates – The Philosophy of Leibniz
Paul Lodge - Leibniz and His Correspondents
300 years after the death of Leibniz - what can we still learn from him today?
More post
- 📝 How have European countries affected the caste system in India?
- 📝 Why has the khopesh never been used since ancient Egypt?
- 📝 Who is this American politician holding a speech at the beginning of "In the year of the Pig" (1968)?
- 📝 How could a chariot work against a phalanx?
- 📝 Why did Gandhi give the violent "Do or Die" slogan to the Quit India movement?
- 📝 Where is Havillah, the land of gold, described in Genesis?
- 📝 What were the differences between the Sieges of Constantinople in 678, 717, and 1453, inc. Greek Fire?
- 📝 Do you know this variety of 1856 Flying Eagle cent?
- 📝 Why did WWI include Japan?
- 📝 Baldwin IV, the Leper King
- 📝 Why were brothels legal?
- 📝 Can anyone identify the country, rank, and unit of this WWI Uniform?
- 📝 When was the last time when there was no electrical lighting switched on on the earth?
- 📝 Who erected Luis Argüello's tombstone?
- 📝 How did Japan get so many Nobel Prizes?
- 📝 How did Moscow become the capital/most important city in Russia?
- 📝 Why did Sweden and Norway become the vassals of Denmark?
- 📝 Meaning of Civil War term "playout"?
- 📝 What is the history of Research and Development laboratories?
- 📝 Did Helsinki have higher standards of living than Saint Petersburg when it was a part of the Russian Empire?
- 📝 How did currency exchange work in the Middle Ages, especially if the coins are not recognized?
- 📝 Was Julius Caesar a hippie?
- 📝 What were the religious effects of the initial Arab conquests in the Byzantine Empire?
- 📝 Marc Bloch's "Feudal Society"; Why do nobles have this vocation?
- 📝 Are automatic assault rifle useless in current conflict?
- 📝 What where historic influences on US unemployment rate from 1949 to 2014?
- 📝 What was the average size of French families during the Middle Ages?
- 📝 Help needed to identify this badge, probably from World War Two
- 📝 How could Stutthof's inmates reach Palmnicken?
- 📝 Is there evidence to suggest the "war on drugs" was a cover for class warfare?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How many languages did Leibniz speak?
- 📝 What languages did Karl Marx speak and how well?
- 📝 How many languages did Zhang Shenfu speak?
- 📝 How did Genghis Khan's army feed so many horses?
- 📝 Did Aztecs know how many continents there are on earth?
- 📝 How many times did the the sacred fire of Vesta die?
- 📝 How many hours per day did a Sumerian farmer sleep?
- 📝 How many trucks did Russia and Germany have at the start of Barbarossa?
- 📝 How many Russian people did Tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible") kill?
- 📝 How many non-jews did Nazis kill?
- 📝 How many soldiers did Ghengis Khan field?
- 📝 How many hours a week did the Tolpuddle Martyrs work?
- 📝 How well did William III speak English at time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688?
- 📝 How many traps did mountain men typically use?
- 📝 How many ships did the fleet of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) possess at its peak (around 1670)?
- 📝 How many lines did an ancient Greek copyist write per day?
- 📝 How many defensive lines did China build for the Second Sino-Japanese War?
- 📝 How many unarmed did Che Guevara kill personally or by order?
- 📝 How many illegitimate children did King Henry VIII have?
- 📝 How many times did the US experiment before dropping the atomic bomb in Japan?
- 📝 In multimember constituencies of the House of Commons, how many votes did each voter have?
- 📝 How many hours did Andrew Carnegie's steel workers work per week?
- 📝 How many rapes did the Wehrmacht commit in the Soviet Union during World War II?
- 📝 How many people did Liu Pengli kill?
- 📝 How did Japan get so many Nobel Prizes?
- 📝 How many people did the Islamic Caliphate send to the Maghreb during the Arabization of North Africa?
- 📝 How many days of supply did units in WW2 carry?
- 📝 How many troops did Hitler send back from the Eastern front to face the Allies' assault?
- 📝 How many times did Germany try to negotiate a peace in WW2?
- 📝 How many digits of Pi did the old Egyptians know?