Otto Christian Dahl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search

For other people named Otto Dahl, see Otto Dahl (disambiguation).

Otto Christian Dahl (July 15, 1903 – November 11, 1995)[1] was a Norwegian missionary in Madagascar, linguist, and government scholar.

Dahl was born in Namsos. He enrolled in theology studies in 1924, graduated in 1927, and was ordained the same year. He worked as a librarian for one year at the Stavanger Mission School before traveling to Madagascar in 1929[2] as a missionary for the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS). He worked in Madagascar, with some interruptions, until 1957.[2] He was the mission director for western Madagascar from 1952 to 1957, and president of the Malagasy Lutheran Church from 1955 to 1957. He was a teacher at Mission School from 1948 to 1949, and worked as a mission secretary for the NMS from 1958 to 1966.

Dahl studied linguistics in Oslo (1935–1937, 1947–1948, and 1950–1952), Hamburg (1937),[2] and Leiden (1950).[2] He received his doctorate from the University of Oslo in 1952 with the dissertation Malgache et maanjan: Une comparaison linguistique (Malagasy and Ma'anyan: A Linguistic Comparison).[2] He was characterized as "probably the world's foremost expert on the Malagasy language." Dahl's work with the language and his comparison between Malagasy and Ma'anyan led him and others to advance the theory that Madagascar had been settled in approximately AD 400 by Ma'anyan-speaking people from the Tamianglayang area in southwestern Kalimantan (Borneo).[3][4]

Dahl was given a government scholarship in 1967. He was named a "knight" of the National Order of Madagascar in 1979, an "officer" in 1984, a "commander" in 1989, and a "grand officer" in 1995. Dahl was also awarded the Norwegian King's Medal of Merit in gold. He was made a member of the Malagasy Academy 1941, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1957.

Dahl had five children, one of whom is Øyvind Dahl, a missionary and professor at the Stavanger Mission School. Otto Christian Dahl died in Stavanger.

Selected works by Dahl[edit]

"Bibelen på Madagaskar" (The Bible in Madagascar, 1950)

"De Zending op Madagaskar" (The Mission in Madagascar, 1950)

Malgache et maanjan: Une comparaison linguistique (Malagasy and Ma'anyan: A Linguistic Comparison, dissertation, 1951)

Les débuts de l'orthographe malgache (The Beginnings of Malagasy Spelling, 1966)

Contes malgaches en dialecte sakalava (Malagasy Tales in the Sakalava Dialect, 1968)

Misjonsarbeidet og folkets kulturelle tradisjoner: Et foredrag for misjonærer (Missionary Work and Cultural Traditions: A Lecture for Missionaries, 1969)

Gassisk (Malagasy, 1970)

Proto-Austronesian (1973, 1977)

Atopazy ny masonao (Lift up Your Eyes, 1974)

Early Phonetic and Phonemic Changes in Austronesian (1981)

"Sorabe: revelant l'evolution du dialecte Antemoro" (Sorabe: Revealing the Evolution of the Antemoro Dialect, 1983)

"Norske misjonærers innsats i vitenskapelig arbeid" (Norwegian Missionaries' Research Efforts, 1984)

"Mahomet dans le panthéon Malgache" (Muhammad in the Malagasy Pantheon, 1984)

"Focus in Malagasy and Proto-Austronesian" (1986)

En dør mellom tanker: misjon og språk (A Door between Thoughts: Mission and Language, 1987)

"Bantu Substratum in Malagasy" (1988)

Norsklærer for folk med annet morsmål (Norwegian for Speakers of Other Languages, 1990)

"Migration from Kalimantan to Madagascar" (1991)

Kulturminner: døde levninger eller levende minner? (Cultural Heritage: Dead Remnants or Living Memories?, 2001)

References[edit]

^ Randriamasimanana, Charles. 1996. Otto Christian Dahl (July 15, 1903 - November 11, 1995). Norsk lingvistisk tidsskrift 14(1): 63–70.

^ a b c d e Dahl, Otto Christian. 1973. Proto-Austronesian. Lund: Studentlitteratur, p. 150.

^ Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2012. Languages of the World: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 163.

^ Goodman, Steven M., & William L. Jungers . 2014. Extinct Madagascar: Picturing the Island's Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 38–40.

Authority control

BNF: cb120281571 (data)

ISNI: 0000 0001 1816 5151

LCCN: n79075233

NTA: 068884982

SUDOC: 028448359

VIAF: 112575722

WorldCat Identities: lccn-n79075233

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Otto_Christian_Dahl&oldid=878696785"

Categories:

Norwegian theologians

Linguists from Norway

Norwegian government scholars

People from Namsos

1903 births

1995 deaths

University of Oslo alumni

Norwegian Lutheran missionaries

Norwegian expatriates in Germany

Norwegian expatriates in Madagascar

Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Recipients of the King's Medal of Merit in gold

Missionary linguists

Lutheran missionaries in Madagascar

Linguists of Austronesian languages

Hidden categories:

Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers

Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers

Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers

Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers

Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers

Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers

Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers

Navigation menu

Personal tools

Not logged in

Talk

Contributions

Create account

Log in

Namespaces

Article

Talk

Variants

Views

Read

Edit

View history

More

Search

Navigation

Main page

Contents

Featured content

Current events

Random article

Donate to Wikipedia

Wikipedia store

Interaction

Help

About Wikipedia

Community portal

Recent changes

Contact page

Tools

What links here

Related changes

Upload file

Special pages

Permanent link

Page information

Wikidata item

Cite this page

Print/export

Download as PDF

Printable version

Languages

العربية

Norsk bokmål

Norsk nynorsk

Edit links

This page was last edited on 16 January 2019, at 12:07 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

Privacy policy

About Wikipedia

Disclaimers

Contact Wikipedia

Developers

Statistics

Cookie statement

Mobile view