Speaking Schliemann’s Language

Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, ASCSA News, 13-03-2015

“In the course of a year [1843] I was able to learn Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese with extraordinary facility, and it took me no more than six weeks in each case to speak and write these languages fluently,” Schliemann wrote later in his life.

On March 11th, LAASA, the association of Lady Ambassadors and Ambassadors’ Spouses in Athens, presented the results of their Schliemann Project in Cotsen Hall, the auditorium of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). The event, entitled Speaking Schliemann’s Language: Insights from Cataloguing Languages in Schliemann’s Travel Diaries, 1846-1890, included a number of eloquent, informative, and entertaining presentations about Heinrich Schliemann’s linguistic genius. The Schliemann Project was conceived after members of LAASA visited the Gennadius Library more than a year ago. During that visit they were shown the travel diaries of Heinrich Schliemann, which they found fascinating because of the many languages Schliemann wrote. I still remember our excitement when we discovered that there were entries in Urdu! The first LAASA visit was followed by a visit of the ambassador of Spain, Alfonso Lucini, and his wife and president of LAASA, Carmen Serrano de Haro. They were enthralled by Schliemann’s Spanish entries. After that visit we received an inquiry asking if LAASA members could study and catalog in a systematic fashion the languages in Schliemann’s travel diaries. We accepted the offer with enthusiasm. In the lingo of the archivist, this is called crowdsourcing, and members of LAASA, considering all the languages that they collectively command, was the perfect group to accomplish this difficult task.

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