15 Facts About Rasmus Rask

Rasmus Kristian Rask was a Danish linguist and philologist.

Rasmus Rask wrote several grammars and worked on comparative phonology and morphology.

Rasmus Rask is especially known for his contributions to comparative linguistics, including an early formulation of what would later be known as Grimm's Law.

Rasmus Rask was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1829.

An interest in orthography led Rasmus Rask to develop his own spelling system for Danish that more closely resembled its pronunciation, and it was at this time that he changed the spelling of his last name from "Rasch" to "Rasmus Rask".

In 1808, Rasmus Rask traveled to Copenhagen to continue his studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he stayed in the Regensen dormitory.

From 1813 to 1815, Rasmus Rask visited Iceland, where he became fluent in Icelandic and familiarized himself with Icelandic literature and customs.

Rasmus Rask argued that the Germanic languages were not related to Basque, Greenlandic, Finnish or the Celtic languages.

In 1814, after returning from Iceland, Rasmus Rask worked as a sub-librarian at the University of Copenhagen library.

In October 1816, Rasmus Rask left Denmark on a literary expedition funded by the monarchy to investigate Asian languages and collect manuscripts for the University of Copenhagen library.

Rasmus Rask traveled first to Sweden, where he stayed for two years.

Rasmus Rask returned to Copenhagen in May 1823, bringing a considerable number of manuscripts in Persian, Zend, Pali and Sinhala for Copenhagen libraries.

Rasmus Rask was the first to show the relationship between the ancient Northern and the Western and Eastern Germanic languages, as well as to show their relationship with the Lithuanian, Slavonic, Greek and Latin languages.

Rasmus Rask formulated the first working version of what would later be known as "Grimm's Law" for the transmutation of consonants in the transition from the old Indo-European languages to Germanic, although he only compared Germanic and Greek, as Sanskrit was unknown to him at the time.

Rasmus Rask influenced many later linguists, and in particular Karl Verner carried on his inquiries into comparative and historical linguistics.