Dic Aberdaron
polyglot.[1]
Life
Aberdaron was born in 1780 in the coastal town of
Alice Griffith as midwife.[2]
He had little or no formal education, but was reputed to have taught himself 14 or 15 languages, both ancient and modern, including Latin at the age of 11.
Aberdaron's Welsh, Greek and Hebrew dictionary is now kept at St Asaph Cathedral.
He is buried in the parish church of
Welsh poet R. S. Thomas, who was once the vicar of Aberdaron, wrote a poem about him, simply titled Dic Aberdaron. T. H. Parry-Williams
wrote a somewhat different poem with the same title in Welsh, stressing his eccentricity and the pointlessness of his learning, since he never appears to have used any of his languages, but concludes: "Chwarae-teg i Dic โ nid yw pawb yn gwirioni'r un fath" (Fair play to Dic โ not everybody is silly in the same way).
Notes
- ^ Humphreys, H. The Celebrated Cambrian Linguist, or the History of Dick Aberdaron (Carnarvon: H. Humphreys, 1866).
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70541. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
External links
Media related to Richard Robert Jones (Dic Aberdaron) at Wikimedia Commons- BBC article
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