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List Of Noted Polyglots
This is a list of notable people with a knowledge of six or more languages. Deceased Antiquity and Middle Ages * Mithridates VI (135–63 BC), King of Pontus. According to Pliny the Elder, Mithridates could speak the languages of all of the twenty-two nations that he ruled. * Cleopatra (69–30 BC), Queen of Egypt. According to Plutarch, Cleopatra spoke many languages in addition to her native language, Greek, including Latin, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Trogodyte, and the languages of the Hebraioi, Arabes, Syrians, Medes, and Parthians. * Al-Farabi (870–950), Islamic philosopher. He was reputed to know seventy languages. * Frederick II (1194–1250), King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor. He knew Italian, French, Latin, Greek, German, and Arabic. Modern age, pre-18th century * Mehmed II (1432–1481), Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. In addition to his native language, Turkish, he learnt Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Latin, and Greek. * Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mithridates VI Eupator
Mithridates or Mithradates VI Eupator ( grc-gre, Μιθραδάτης; 135–63 BC) was ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia from 120 to 63 BC, and one of the Roman Republic's most formidable and determined opponents. He was an effective, ambitious and ruthless ruler who sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars) to break Roman dominion over Asia and the Hellenic world. He has been called the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus. He cultivated an immunity to poisons by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses; this practice, now called mithridatism, is named after him. After his death he became known as Mithridates the Great. Etymology ''Mithridates'' is the Greek attestation of the Persian name ''Mihrdāt'', meaning "given by Mithra", the name of the ancient Iranian sun god. The name itself is derived from Old Iranian ''Miθra-dāta-''. Ancestry, family and ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti
Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti (17 September 1774 – 15 March 1849) was an Italian cardinal and famed hyperpolyglot. Life Born to humble parents in Bologna, he showed exceptional mnemonic skills as well as a flair for music and foreign language learning from a very young age. He studied at the Piarists where he had the chance to meet several missionaries from various countries. By speaking with them he began learning several new languages including Swedish, German, Spanish and Southern American native languages as well as studying Latin and ancient Greek in school. He completed his theological studies before he had reached the minimum age for ordination as a priest. During this period he also studied Asian Languages; in 1797 he was ordained a priest and became professor of Arabic, Hebrew, Asian Languages and Greek at the University of Bologna. In 1797, an English couple Georgiana Hare-Naylor and her husband had to return home. They left three of their children in the care of Profe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herschell Filipowski
Herschell E. Filipowski (1816 – 12 June 1872), also known as Tzvi Hirsh Filipowski (, ), was a Lithuanian-born British Jewish Hebraist, editor, mathematician, linguist and actuary. Biography Early life Herschell Filipowski was born in Virbalen, Russian Empire (today part of Lithuania) in 1816. He showed great aptitude for the study of mathematics and languages at an early age, and was fortunate in finding a Polish schoolmaster who secretly aided him in acquiring the rudiments of a modern education. Besides his native Yiddish, Filipowski became conversant in Polish, Russian, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, English, Spanish, French, German, and Chinese, and at age 15 he published ''An Almanac for One Hundred Years'' in both Polish and Russian. In 1839 he emigrated to England, and received an appointments as Teacher of Hebrew and Oriental languages at the Jews' College and the West Metropolitan Jewish School. His first published work was ''Mo'ed Mo'adim'' on the Jewish, Karaite, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Von Bismarck
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of Junker landowners, Bismarck rose rapidly in Prussian politics, and from 1862 to 1890 he was the Minister President of Prussia, minister president and List of foreign ministers of Prussia, foreign minister of Prussia. Before his rise to the Executive (government), executive, he was the Prussian ambassador to Russian Empire, Russia and Second French Empire, France and served in both houses of the Landtag of Prussia, Prussian Parliament. He masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as the first Chancellor of Germany#Under the Emperor (1871–1918), Chancellor of the German Empire until 1890, in which capacity he dominated European affairs. He had served as the chancellor of the North German Confederation from 1867 to 1871, alon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solomon Caesar Malan
Solomon Caesar Malan (22 April 1812 – 25 November 1894) D.D., Vicar of Broadwindsor, Prebendary of Sarum, was a British divine, polyglot and well known orientalist whose fluency in language was legendary: English, French, Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, Tibetan, Chinese, Georgian, Armenian, Coptic, Geez. Life By birth a Genevan descended from an exiled French family, Malan was born in Geneva, where his father, Dr Henri Abraham César Malan (1787–1864) enjoyed a great reputation as a Protestant divine. From his earliest youth he manifested a remarkable faculty for the study of languages, and when he came to Scotland as tutor in the marquis of Tweeddale's family at the age of 18 he had already made progress in Sanskrit, Arabic and Hebrew. In 1833 he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford; and English being almost an unknown tongue to him, he petitioned the examiners to allow him to do his paper work of the examination in French, German, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russia Beyond
''Russia Beyond'' (formerly ''Russia Beyond The Headlines'') is a Russian multilingual project operated by TV-Novosti (formerly Russia Today), founded by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. History ''Russia Beyond The Headlines'' was launched in 2007 by the ''Rossiyskaya Gazeta'', a newspaper published by the Government of Russia. The first publisher of the project was the deputy CEO of ''Rossiyskaya Gazeta'' Eugene Abov. On January 9, 2016, ''RBTH'' became part of TV-Novosti whilst retaining its own distinct brand. In 2017 the project dropped all printed versions. On 5 September 2017, ''RBTH'' dropped the last two words of its full name, becoming ''Russia Beyond''. ''Russia Beyond'' is managed by a section of the news agency TV-Novosti. Reception ''The Guardian'' commentator Roy Greenslade, in 2014, and former ''Slate'' journalist Jack Shafer, in 2007, accused ''Russia Beyond'' of being propaganda. In Europe, the media outlet paid London's ''Daily Telegraph'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Prosper Witkiewicz
Jan Prosper Witkiewicz ( lt, Jonas Prosperas Vitkevičius; russian: Ян Вѝкторович Виткѐвич, Yan Viktorovich Vitkevich) (June 24, 1808–May 8, 1839) was a Lithuanian orientalist, explorer and diplomat in Russian service. He was a Russian agent in Kabul just before the First Anglo-Afghan War. Surviving family accounts (supported by Polish literature) suggest that, most probably, he was a double agent who tried to provoke a major conflict between British and Russian Empire in Central Asia to weaken the latter decisively and thus give his native Lithuania a chance to regain sovereignty. He was also the paternal uncle of Stanisław Witkiewicz. Early life He was born into an old and distinguished Samogitian noble family in the Lithuanian village of Pašiaušė, at the time occupied by the Russian Empire. His father, Wiktoryn Witkiewicz, was the vice- marshal of the Šiauliai County appointed by Napoleon during the French invasion of Russia, and his mothe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's ''Divine Comedy'' and was one of the fireside poets from New England. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were ''Voices of the Night'' (1839) and ''Ballads and Other Poems'' (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Rowan Hamilton
Sir William Rowan Hamilton Doctor of Law, LL.D, Doctor of Civil Law, DCL, Royal Irish Academy, MRIA, Royal Astronomical Society#Fellow, FRAS (3/4 August 1805 – 2 September 1865) was an Irish mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ireland, living at Dunsink Observatory. Hamilton's scientific career included the study of geometrical optics, ideas from Fourier analysis, and his work on quaternions which made him one of the founders of modern linear algebra. He made major contributions in optics, classical mechanics and abstract algebra. His work was fundamental to modern theoretical physics, particularly his reformulation of Newtonian mechanics, now called Hamiltonian mechanics. It is now central both to electromagnetism and to quantum mechanics. Early life Hamilton was the fourth of nine children born to Sarah Hutton (1780–1817) and Archibald Hamilton (1778–1819),Bruno (2003) who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie
''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (ADB, german: Universal German Biography) is one of the most important and comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language. It was published by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences between 1875 and 1912 in 56 volumes, printed in Leipzig by Duncker & Humblot. The ADB contains biographies of about 26,500 people who died before 1900 and lived in the German language Sprachraum of their time, including people from the Netherlands before 1648. Its successor, the '' Neue Deutsche Biographie'', was started in 1953 and is planned to be finished in 2023. The index and full-text articles of ADB and NDB are freely available online via the website ''German Biography'' (''Deutsche Biographie''). Notes References * * External links * ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' - full-text articles at German Wikisource Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helmuth Von Moltke The Elder
Helmuth is both a masculine German given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name; *Helmuth Theodor Bossert (1889–1961), German art historian, philologist and archaeologist *Helmuth Duckadam (born 1959), Romanian former footballer *Helmuth Ehrhardt, German psychiatrist *Helmuth Hübener (1925–1942), German opponent of the Third Reich *Helmuth Koinigg (1948–1974), Austrian racing driver *Helmuth Lehner (born 1968), Austrian musician *Helmuth Lohner (1933–2015), Austrian actor and theatre director * Helmuth Markov (born 1952), German politician * Helmuth von Moltke (other), several people *Helmuth Nyborg (born 1937), Danish professor at Aarhus University * Helmuth von Pannwitz (1898–1947), German SS Cossack Cavalry Corps officer executed for war crimes *Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985), German philosopher and sociologist *Helmuth Rilling (born 1933), German conductor *Helmuth von Ruckteschell (1890–1948), German navy officer *Helmuth Schne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of Short story, short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous Fact-checking, fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue. Overview and history ''The New Yorker'' was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a ''The New York Times, N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
