#Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay

[rewordfully]

You recently mentioned Jan Ignacy Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay but unfortunately didn't elaborate any further. I'd love to read your thoughts about him 😌

hooo boy let me tell you about the best linguist you’ve probably never heard aboutjan niecisław was a polish linguist (1845-1929), he got his phd from leipzig (with a thesis on old polish), then worked at kazan, dorpat (now tartu), krakow, warsaw, lublin and st petersburg and he just….. radiates chaotic neutral energy

- basically invented the notion of phoneme nikolaj trubetzkoy whomst

- postulated the langue/parole distinction way earlier than de saussure

- developed a very early concept of distinctive features

- was fluent in polish, czech, german, french, russian, italian and slovene

- was accused of promoting panslavism and got kicked out of galicia

- a very, hm, devoted student of his, henryk ułaszyn, was so obsessed with jan niecisław he requested in his will to be buried next to him (which actually did happen)((and i have to tell u more abt ułaszyn sometime too))

- he and ułaszyn got into some youtube beauty community worthy beef with a polish lexicographer, alexander bruckner (to be fair bruckner deserved it). these are some of the things they called him in their private correspondence (sorry i’m not translating the polish originals bc they’re just too good): ‘warchoł filologiczny’, ‘wyjątkowo tępy w pojmowaniu faktów językowych’, ‘cierpiący na moral insanity’

- was a pacifist, a feminist, wanted to introduce yiddish as a compulsory subject in all polish schools, fought for the environment

- because of his views and activism national minorities living in poland at the time entered him for the presidential elections without telling him dfjkdkd (he lost) ((and that’s potentially a good thing bc the guy who won was later assassinated))

- wrote a long ass essay (monograph?) on why he no longer was a part of the catholic church and dragged them for 79 glorious pages

- was once asked to write a note for the anniversary of some professor’s work and instead of writing something nice dragged him too and later published it as a pamphlet

- he was part of a circle of people in polish academia which included mostly linguists and writers, and extended to women’s rights activists and some future lgbt activists

- his daughter, cezaria, was the first female rector in polish academia and a pioneer in ethnology and phenomenology

here’s a picture of him holding a dog

jan niecisław ignacy baudouin de courtenay was the baddest bitch and doesn’t get enough credit

[lukaszrygalo]

Podtrzymywanie dzikości Jeżeli najnowsze środki komunikacji służą do ułatwiania „pielgrzymek” bałwochwalczych, jeżeli najnowsze metody szkolne bywają zużytkowywane do ubierania całych gromad ludzkich w jednostajny mundur stadowych wierzeń i „przekonań”, toć jest to chyba nadużywanie techniki i wynalazków w celu podtrzymywania dzikości Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay Krzewiciele zdziczenia Gebethner i Spółka, Kraków, 1905