Jørgen Rischel (; 10 August 193410 May 2007) was a

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

who worked extensively with different subjects in linguistics, especially

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoreti ...

and documentation of

endangered languages An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

Childhood

As the third of four sons of

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

pastor A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and ...

Ejner Rischel, Rischel's early interest in other cultures was stimulated by a gifted primary school teacher in the Kullerup Public School on

Fyn Funen ( da, Fyn, ), with an area of , is the third-largest island of Denmark, after Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy. It is the 165th-largest island in the world. It is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 469,947 as ...

. Nina Grønnum, Frans Gregersen and Hans Basbøll
In Memoriam: Jørgen Rischel, ''Phonetica''
2007; No. 64, p. 194-95. From the age of 11 he attended the

Nyborg Nyborg is a city in central Denmark, located in Nyborg Municipality on the island of Funen and with a population of 17,525 (2022). It is the easternmost settlement on Funen. By road, it is located 34 km east of Odense, 35 km north of ...

Realskole (a

private school Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

with partial state funding), where he developed interests in chemistry,

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

and

ornithology Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

. In the garden of the Kullerup rectory he carefully recorded in musical notation the characteristic song and variations of over 20 different

songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 5000 ...

s. Having assembled a crystal radio receiver and transmitter, he once transmitted his mother Gunnild playing

Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...

on her

grand piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

. Rischel's transmission accidentally interfered with a national Radio Denmark ''(Statsradiofonien)'' broadcast. His biographers suggest that this may have been "an early manifestation of what later became a serious research activity, namely the construction of the analog parallel synthesizer at the Institute of Phonetics in the late sixties." Rischel's interest in linguistics developed whilst still at the Realskole in Nyborg. Aware of how the local

dialect of

differed from the normative

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

dialect, he also became interested in

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

after his school took a field trip to

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. Having read

Bernhard Karlgren Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren (; 15 October 1889 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods. In the early 20th century, Karlgren conduct ...

’s introductory textbook on

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

and a grammar of

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

, Rischel raised rabbits and sold them to earn the money to purchase a copy of ''Danmarks Runeinskrifter'', a scholarly three-volume work on Danish

runes Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

edited by Lis Jacobsen and

Erik Moltke Erik Moltke (4 April 1901 – 19 October 1984) was a Danish runologist, writer, and editor. Through his leadership, the Runologist Section of the National Museum of Denmark became a world centre for the scientific study of runology Runology is ...

and published during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

University studies

From 1952 to 1956 he studied

Nordic philology Scandinavian studies is an interdisciplinary academic field of area studies, mainly in the United States and Germany, that primarily focuses on the Scandinavian languages (also known as North Germanic languages) and cultural studies pertaining to ...

at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

, specializing in West Nordic, obtaining two one-year government scholarships to continue his studies in

Reykjavík Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...

and

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

. He took classes in Danish

dialectology Dialectology (from Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , '' -logia'') is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their ass ...

with Poul Andersen and in

with

Eli Fischer-Jørgensen Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (; 11 February 1911, Nakskov, Denmark – 27 February 2010, Virum) was a professor of phonetics at the University of Copenhagen and led the Institute for Phonetics. She was a member of the Danish resistance movement fight ...

. At Oslo he met linguist

Einar Haugen Einar Ingvald Haugen (; April 19, 1906 – June 20, 1994) was an American linguist, writer, and professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Harvard University. Biography Haugen was born in Sioux City, Iowa, to Norwegian immigrants from t ...

, who was to be a great influence on Rischel's life.

Career

In 1974 Rischel earned a doctorate in linguistics. He was a specialist in the Greenlandic language (Kalaallisut); his 1974 thesis was the most comprehensive phonological study of that language to date. He published extensively on topics in

, Faroese and Greenlandic, particularly phonetics and phonology. From 1978 he was a professor of linguistics at the

; from 1981 he was chair in phonetics; on his retirement in 1998 he became professor emeritus there. In retirement he focused on

Mon–Khmer languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

; as a guest researcher at Mahidol University he did extensive fieldwork in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

and Laos, particularly on the

Mlabri Mlabri can refer to: * Mlabri people The Mlabri ( Thai: มลาบรี) or Mrabri are an ethnic group of Thailand and Laos, and have been called "the most interesting and least understood people in Southeast Asia". Only about 400 or fewer Mlab ...

tribal language, an endangered and previously undescribed

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

of a Khmuic language. His 1995 book described Mlabri phonology, morphology and syntax whilst supplying a lexicon with illustrative examples.

Honours and organizations

In 1978 he was elected a member of the

Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters {{Infobox organization , name = The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters , full_name = , native_name = Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab , native_name_lang = , logo = Royal ...

. In November 1991 Rischel was knighted into the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen

Margrethe II of Denmark Margrethe II (; Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid, born 16 April 1940) is Queen of Denmark. Having reigned as Denmark's monarch for over 50 years, she is Europe's longest-serving current head of state and the world's only incumbent femal ...

. He had served as a co-editor of the ''

International Journal of American Linguistics The ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' (''IJAL'') is an academic journal devoted to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas. ''IJAL'' focuses on the investigation of linguistic data and the presentation of grammatical ...

'' (a journal begun by Franz Boas in 1917).

Selected publications

Co-author or contributor

* 1972, Jørgen Rischel, "Consonant Reduction in Faroese Noncompound Wordforms", in Firchow, E. S., Grimstad, K. Hasselmo, N. & W. A. O’Neil (eds.), ''Studies for Einar Haugen, presented by Friends and Colleagues'', pp. 482–497. * 1992, Jørgen Rischel, "A diachronic-typological view of the Faroese language" in ''The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics 7'', Vol. I pp. 93–118. Jonna Louis-Jensen and J. H. W. Poulsen (eds.). Føroya Fródskaparfelag, Tórshavn. * 1992, Jørgen Rischel, "Isolation, contact, and lexical variation in a tribal setting" in ''Language Contact'', pp. 149–177. Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.). Mounton-de Gruyter, Berlin - New York. * 1995, Jørgen Rischel, Introduction to ''Aspects of Danish Prosody, pp. 3–20. Jørgen Rischel and Hans Basbøll (eds.). Odense University Press,

Odense Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (behind Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2022, the city proper had a population of 180,863 while Odense Municipality had a population of 20 ...

. * 1995, Jørgen Rischel, "Sprog og begrebsdannelse" in ''Sprog og tanke - Fire essays'', pp. 17–62. Poul Lindegård Hjorth (ed.).,

, Copenhagen. (in Danish) * 1998, I. Kleivan, C. Berthelsen, R. Petersen, Jørgen Rischel, B. Jacobsen: "Oqaatsinut Tapiliussaq / Oqaatsit Supplementsbind", Atuakkiorfik-Ilinniusiorfik,

Nuuk Nuuk (; da, Nuuk, formerly ) is the capital and largest city of Greenland, a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark. Nuuk is the seat of government and the country's largest cultural and economic centre. The major cities from other coun ...

, 184 pp. (in Greenlandic and Danish)

Books

* 1974, ''Topics in West Greenlandic Phonology''. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag (Ph.D. thesis). * 1995, ''Minor Mlabri: A Hunter-Gatherer Language of Northern Indochina.'' Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen, 367 pp.

Journals and symposia

* 1985, "Was There a Fourth Vowel in Old Greenlandic?" in ''International Journal of American Linguistics,'' Vol. 51, Issue 4, October 1985, pp. 553–554. * 1990, "Fieldwork among spirits" in ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 13, pp. 861–869. * 1990, "What is phonetic representation?" in ''Journal of Phonetics'' 18, pp. 395–410. * 1991, "The relevance of phonetics for phonology: A commentary" in ''Phonetica'' 48, pp. 233–262. * 1991, "Invariance in the linguistic expression, with digressions into music" (pp. 68–77), "Comments on the symposium" (pp. 434–440), and "Summary and discussion of speech and music combined" (pp. 429–433), all in ''Music, Language, Speech and Brain'' (Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series vol. 59). J. Sundberg, L. Nord and R. Carlson (eds.). Macmillan Press, London. * 1992
"Acharn Kraisri and phonetic notation"
in ''Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter'' 18 (September 1992), pp. 16–18 (a discussion of the contributions of Acharn Krisri to comparative linguistics and the difficulty of devising a standard romanization system for

transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...

of Thai). * 1992, "Formal linguistics and real speech" in ''Speech Communication'' 11, pp. 379–392. * 1993, "Lexical variation in two 'Kammuic' languages" in ''Pan-Asiatic Linguistics, Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Language and Linguistics'' vol. III pp. 1451–1462. Amara Prasithathsint et al. (eds.).

Chulalongkorn University Chulalongkorn University (CU, th, จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย, ), nicknamed Chula ( th, จุฬาฯ), is a public and autonomous research university in Bangkok, Thailand. The university was originally fo ...

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated populati ...

. * 2000. "The Dialect of Bernatzik’s (1938) 'Yumbri' refound?" in ''Mon–Khmer Studies Journal'', 30:115-122. * 2004, ''Pan-dialectal databases: Mlabri, an oral Mon–Khmer language'',

Lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoreti ...

conference,

Payap University Payap University ( th, มหาวิทยาลัยพายัพ; ), established in 1974, is a private and non-profit institution founded by the Foundation of the Church of Christ in Thailand. Payap University is a liberal arts and pre-pr ...

Chiangmai Chiang Mai (, from th, เชียงใหม่ , nod, , เจียงใหม่ ), sometimes written as Chiengmai or Chiangmai, is the largest city in northern Thailand, the capital of Chiang Mai province and the second largest city in ...

. * 2004,
In what sense is Mlabri a West Khmuic language
'', presentation to 37th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics,

Mon–Khmer The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

workshop,

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion 1934 births 2007 deaths Linguists from Denmark Dialectologists Linguists of Eskaleut languages 20th-century linguists Eskimologists