Daniel Kane ( zh, c=康丹, p=Kāng Dān; 25 January 194816 April 2021) was an Australian diplomat and linguist, and one of the world's foremost authorities on the extinct Jurchen and Khitan languages and their scripts.

Biography

Daniel Kane was born in January 1948 in Melbourne. Bereaved of his father when young, circumstances of extreme povertyTed Rule, Christopher Nailer, Edwin Lowe, Annie Luman Ren et al.
''Daniel Kane,1948-2021,''

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...

, 19 July 2021 pp-1-4. constrained him to cut his education short and enter the work force at 16. He left school and joined a bank, working as a teller at a branch in

Lygon Street Lygon Street is located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, running through the inner northern suburbs of Carlton, Carlton North, Princes Hill and Brunswick East. Lygon Street is synonymous with the Italian community of Melbourne, forming ...

Carlton Carlton may refer to: People * Carlton (name), a list of those with the given name or surname * Carlton (singer), English soul singer Carlton McCarthy * Carlton, a pen name used by Joseph Caldwell (1773–1835), American educator, Presbyterian ...

. There the then Dean of Arts at the university noticed he had a remarkable talent for languages, appearing to speak to Greek and Italian clients fluently - he had picked up Italian, for one, listening and talking to the sons of immigrants at school in his preteen years - and invited him to finish high school and take up studies at the nearby university. He undertook further education in his spare time and matriculated to

Melbourne University The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

with high honours. He took a

First Class Honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

degree there in 1971, majoring in Chinese and Russian and was granted a Ph.D. scholarship to the ANU. His Ph.D. was conferred in 1975 with a thesis on the Jurchen language a

Tungusic language The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the doz ...

a precursor of, and related to Manchu spoken during the Jin dynasty in North China. Parallel to his academic career, Kane has also had a career in diplomacy. He joined the

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is the department of the Australian federal government responsible for foreign policy and relations, international aid (using the branding Australian Aid), consular services and trade and inv ...

in 1976 and was posted to Beijing for four years (1976-1980) during the early part of the reform period and particularly the period of the

Democracy Wall From November 1978 to December 1979, thousands of people put up " big character posters" on a long brick wall of Xidan Street, Xicheng District of Beijing, to protest about the political and social issues of China. Under acquiescence of the Chine ...

which he rose early to read every morning and whose unsurpassed knowledge of which formed the basis of much of what was known outside China of that movement. He was also Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy in Beijing for two years in the 1990s (1995-1997). Academically he was lecturer in Chinese at the University of Melbourne in 1981 and visiting scholar at the Department of Chinese at Peking University in 1988 and 1993. From 1997 he was Professor of Chinese at Macquarie University in Sydney until his retirement in 2012. He was widowed in 2010 when his wife, the

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

scholar of Qing history and Chinese modernization, Yè Xiǎoqīng (葉曉青), died of cancer, after risking her initial recovery from an early diagnosis of cancer to bear their son Ian (易安 (Yìān). Kane suffered for several years from

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

Publications

Books

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Papers

References

External links

Professor Daniel Kane
*Daniel Kane
'The decipherment of dead languages in China: the case of Kitan,'
George E. Morrison Lecture 19 October 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kane, Daniel 1948 births 2021 deaths Australian Esperantists Australian sinologists Linguists from Australia Linguists of the Jurchen language Linguists of the Khitan language Macquarie University faculty People from Melbourne