É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher
THE LANGUAGE STUDIES OF IGNAZ GOLDZIHER tongue. This conclusion, however, went uneasily with the Dutch he used with a man from Holland, 15 7 the German he addressed to the conductor and the French in which he conversed with her. "Est-ce que vous parlez aussi l'anglais?", 15 8 she inquired. "Oui, madame, et outre cela, je parle ma belle langue maternelle". The revelation that the enigmatic passenger was a Hungarian Jew was doubly surprising to his small audience: to the perplexed Genevan lady it was a source of astonishment; to the discomfited priest, whose faulty quotations from the Quran Goldziher had corrected, a cause for considerable uncase. In addition to this ready oral facility in different languages, Goldziher also enjoyed talking. He was a much admired public speaker for official occasions, scholarly and otherwise, and he often took the leading role ("Vorbeter") in synagogue services and other circumstances of Jewish ritual. Already at the age of six the "Wunderkind" used to deliver a weekly speech in Hungarian for the edification of his fellow Bible students,' 5 9 and throughout his life Goldziher was always ready to exercise his conversational gifts before an appreciative audience. Thus, in Aberdeen in 1906 he Tanger) nach Berlin reisten. Es war mir keine Schwierigkeit ihren inaghrebinischen Dialekt zu verstehen; ich konnte mich natürlich nur des syrisch-aegyptischen bedienen, da ich nur in diesem konversieren kann". Nöldeke's (likewise unpublished) reply of 12.12.1914 runs: "Daß Sie sich mit d. Marokkanern gut unterhalten konnten, freut mich. Hätte kaum gedacht, daß deren Dialekt doch dem an die ägypt. u. syr. Dialekte Gewöhnten verständlich wäre. Marqais' Mittheilungen bringen einem ja vor diesen maghr. Dialekten ein gewisses Grausen bei. Ich habe nie arab. gesprochen, nie Gelegenheit dazu gehabt, aber immer d. Eindruck, dass ich viel rascher türkisch u. persisch hätte sprechen lernen (sie), als arabisch, obwohl ich mich so sehr viel mehr mit dieser Sprache beschäftigt habe als mit jenen. In sehr jungen Jahren habe ich freilich in Wien bei d. Mechitaristen türk. Conversationsstunde gehabt, musste die aber aufgeben, weil der, an sich nicht theure, Preis von 1 Fl. für d. Stunde mir doch zu theuer war". I. O.]. 1 5 For Goldziher's Dutch see above n. 62. Despite Goldziher's knowledge of Dutch, Snouck Hurgronje always wrote to him in German (whereas to Nöldeke Snouck would normally write in Dutch). 15 8 Goldziher early acquired a fondness for English literature ( Tagebuch 92) and read the language a good deal (ibid. 203). Whether he was comfortable speaking English, however, is another matter; the private classes which he gave his American pupil Dr. F. D. Chester in 1896 were conducted in French ( Tagebuch 207). This Dr. Chester, subsequently US consul in Budapest (Goldziher, Akadémiai Értesítő 9 (1898), 9; Somogyi, Muslim World 41 (1951), 207), translated into English Goldziher's article 'Some notes on the diwäns of the Arabic tribes', JRAS 1897, 325-334 = GS IV 119 ( Tagebuch 209). For the English of 'The progress of Islamic science in the last three decades' (Heller no. 262), translated from the German of no. 262a = GS IV 443 and the withdrawn Mohammed and Islam (Heller no. 363) see Tagebuch 258-9, 291; Simon, Letters 267, 277 and cf. ibid. 289; Hanisch, Briefwechsel 281, 295; Snouck to Goldziher in van Koningsveld, Letters 483. 15 9 Tagebuch 21. 117
