#OTD 133 years ago, Emma Adelaide Hahn (1893–1967) was born 🥳 She was an expert in Latin grammar and Indo-European linguistics. In 1946, she became the first female president of the Linguistic Society of America (@lingsocam.bsky.social).
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays
#OTD 154 years ago, Cinie Louw (1872–1935) was born 🎉 She was a missionary, translator, and linguist active in present-day Zimbabwe. In her linguistic work, she specialised in the Shona language, particularly the Karanga variety.
#WomenInLinguistics #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays
#OTD 89 years ago, Annegret Bollée (1937-2021) was born 🥳 A classicist, Romanist, and pioneering scholar of (German) creolistics, she was an expert on French-based creoles, particularly those of the Indian Ocean, such as Seychelles Creole and Réunion Creole.
#LinguisticBirthdays #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 161 years ago, Elise Richter (1865–1943) was born 🎂 A specialist in Romance linguistics and phonetics, she became Austria’s first woman to obtain a Habilitation (1905) and its first female professor (1921). She died in 1943 in Theresienstadt.
#WomenInLinguistics #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays
#OTD 90 years ago, Renate Steinitz (1936–2019) was born 🥳 She was a member of the East German Academy of Sciences and worked on German grammar. She also edited several of her father’s works on the Khanty language and wrote about her family history.
#WomenInLinguistics #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays
#OTD 140 years ago, Maria Klingenheben-von Tiling (1886–1974) was born 🎉 She specialised in the Cushitic and Bantu languages of Africa, including Somali and Swahili, respectively. She was also active at the Hamburg Colonial Institute.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 115 years ago, Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (1911–2010) was born 🥳 An expert in phonetics, phonology, and linguistic geography, she was a member of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen and of the Danish resistance movement during the Second World War.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 112 years ago, Felicitas D. Goodman (1914–2005) was born 🎉 She was an expert in both anthropology and linguistics. In her work, she focused particularly on researching the phenomenon of glossolalia in Pentecostal communities in Mexico.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 135 years ago, Luise Berthold (1891–1983) was born 🥳 A philologist, theologian and expert in German dialectology, she was the first woman to habilitate at Marburg University. From 1934 onward, she was responsible for the Hesse-Nassau Dictionary.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 91 years ago, Kay Williamson (1935–2005) was born 🥳 An expert on the study of the languages of the Niger Delta, in particular Ijo and Igbo. In her efforts to promote literacy, she proposed a Pan-Nigerian Alphabet and published several primers.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 116 years ago, Mary Haas (1910–1996) was born 🥳 An expert in historical linguistics, Thai, and Native American languages. She was the first modern linguist to document the Creek language. In 1963, she was the second female president of the LSA.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 117 years ago, Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1909–1985) was born 🎂 She specialised in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history and archaeology. She contributed to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs by demonstrating their historical content.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 100 years ago, Luise Hercus (1926–2018) was born 🎉 She initially focused on Middle Indo-Aryan languages, but later turned to fieldwork, documenting a number of Australian Indigenous languages such as Paakantyi, Wirangu, and Diyari.
#WomenInLinguistics #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays
#OTD 83 years ago, Elisabeth Piirainen (1943-2017) was born 🎉 Her linguistic research focused on metaphorical language, phraseology, and varieties of Low German. In 2001, she was awarded the Johannes-Saß-Preis.
#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 119 years ago, Alice E. Kober (1906–1950) was born 🎂 She was a historical linguist whose work was fundamental to the later decipherment of Linear B. She established that the language, later identified as Mycenaean Greek, was inflectional.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 96 years ago, Lila R. Gleitman (1929–2021) was born 🎉 A pioneer of cognitive science focusing on language acquisition, working also on the theory of syntactic bootstrapping. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1993.
#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 306 years ago, Ann Fisher (1719–1778) was born 🥳 She was an entrepreneur, a school director, and an author of several works on language. Her "A New Grammar", printed in 1750, was the first grammar book of contemporary English written by a woman.
#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 146 years ago, Ethel S. Drower (1879–1972) was born 🎉 She published a number of romantic novels under her maiden name Stevens, but later became an authority on Mandaean culture and an important collector of Mandaean manuscripts.
#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 83 years ago, Robin Lakoff (1942–2025) was born 🎉 She was a pioneering sociolinguist, focusing on the relationship between language and gender. She also studied power relations, politeness, and the role of frames in meaning.
#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 89 years ago, Suzette Haden Elgin (1936–2015) was born 🎉 Best known for her work on verbal self-defence and for the conlang Láadan from her Native Tongue series. The Elgin Award for the best sci-fi poetry collection is named in her honour.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 124 years ago, Dorothy Whitelock (1901–1982) was born 🥳 She was a leading scholar of Old English, best known today for her editions of Old English texts. She was the first woman to hold the Elrington and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 134 years ago, Ida Suter (1891–1974) was born 🎉 An expert dialectologist, she spent 30 years working on the Swiss German Dictionary (@ch-idiotikon.bsky.social) and contributed to the edition of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s (1746–1827) letters.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 114 years ago, Ruth Klappenbach (1911-1977) was born 🎉 She focused on lexicography, became one of the co-founders and co-editors of the Dictionary of Contemporary German Language (Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, 1952-1977).
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 191 years ago, Lucy C. Lloyd (1834-1914) was born 🥳 She was an ethnologist as well as a linguist, she collected an archive of ǀXam and ǃKung texts, who, in 1913, received an honorary doctorate for her work as the first woman in South Africa.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 127 years ago, Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain (1898-1975) was born 🎂 During her anthropological and linguistic career, she investigated the origins of Haitian Creole and conducted field research in Haiti, but also in Congo, Togo, and Nigeria.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 86 years ago, Jane H. Hill (1939–2018) was born 🎉 A linguistic anthropologist who studied Uto-Aztecan languages in the US and in her sociolinguistic work analysed strategies behind racist language, including Mock Spanish.
#WomenInLinguistics #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays
#OTD 134 years ago, Louise Kaiser (1891–1973) was born 🎉 A pioneering experimental phonetician, as well as an anthropologist and artist. In 1926, she became the first female lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (@uva.nl).
#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx #WomenInLinguistics
#OTD 327 years ago, Johanna Corleva (1698–1752) was born 🥳 Translator, grammarian, and likely the first female lexicographer from the Netherlands. She translated grammatical treatises into Dutch, including the Port-Royal Grammar.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 99 years ago, Els Oksaar (1926–2015) was born 🎉 She was an expert on early language acquisition, language contact, and multilingualism in children. She also contributed to the development of the theory of culturemes.
#WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
#OTD 342 years ago, Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) was born 🥳 A translator and a pioneer of Old English studies, she authored "The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue", the first Old English grammar written in English.
#LinguisticBirthdays #WomenInLinguistics #Histlx
