Gerhard Rohlfs | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Rohlfs, c. 1959 | |
| Born | July 14, 1892 |
| Died | September 12, 1986 (aged 94) |
Gerhard Rohlfs (July 14, 1892 – September 12, 1986) was a German linguist. He taught Romance languages and literature at the universities in Tübingen and Munich. He was described[by whom?] as an "archeologist of words".[citation needed]
Rohlfs was born in Berlin-Lichterfelde. His main interest was the languages and dialects spoken in Southern Italy and he travelled extensively in this region. He studied Italiot Greek (a language still spoken in a few places in Salento, southern Apulia, and in Bovesia, southern Calabria) and found several indications suggesting that Italiot-Greek is a direct descendant of the language originally spoken by the Greek colonists of Magna Grecia. He first advanced this theory in his book Griechen und Romanen in Unteritalien (1924). He also published two complete vocabularies of the dialects spoken in Bovesia (1938-1939) and in Salento (1956-1961).
His main work is considered to be his Historical Grammar of the Italian Language and its Dialects (Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten, 1949-1954). He received honorary degrees from the University of Calabria in Cosenza and the University of Salento in Lecce. He died in Tübingen.
