Kārlis Mīlenbahs (18 January 1853 in Courland

Courland

Courland is one of the historical and cultural regions of Latvia. The regions of Semigallia and Selonia are sometimes considered as part of Courland.- Geography and climate :...

 – 27 March 1916 in Võru

Võru

Võru is a town and a municipality in south-eastern Estonia. It is the capital of Võru County and the centre of Võru Parish.-History:Võru was founded on 21 August 1784, according to the wish of the Empress Catherine II of Russia, by the order of Riga Governor general count George Browne, on the...

, Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

) was the first native speaker of Latvian

Latvian language

Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

 to devote his career to linguistics. Mīlenbahs studied classical philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 at the University of Dorpat (he did not remain at the University because of his poverty). He was the author of over a hundred scholarly articles on the language in Latvian, Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, but his main achievement was the Latvian-German dictionary that remains the most important lexicographical work on Latvian (the first four volumes were printed posthumously between 1923 and 1932 in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

; the dictionary was completed and expanded by Jānis Endzelīns, with whom Mīlenbahs co-wrote other works, including a major Latvian grammar). His polemics with the poet Rainis

Rainis

Rainis was the pseudonym of Jānis Pliekšāns was a Latvian poet, playwright, translator, and politician. Rainis' works include the classic plays Uguns un nakts and Indulis un Ārija , and a highly regarded translation of Goethe's Faust...

 led to an important essay on literary Latvian published in 1909, and he was also a translator of the The Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

(1890-95).

External links

• Mīlenbahs' and Endzelīns' Latvian-German Dictionary (The page is in Latvian, but clicking on the image of the cover will take you to the online version; type "demo" in both login fields to obtain entries beginning with "A" and "Ā," no registration needed; registering for access to the entire dictionary is free, but the registration form is in Latvian only.)