Ronald E. Asher | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1926-07-23)23 July 1926 Gringley-on-the-Hill, England |
| Died | 26 December 2022(2022-12-26) (aged 96) |
| Occupation | Linguist, educator |
| Language | English |
| Notable awards | Sahitya Akademi Honorary Fellowship (2007) |
Ronald Eaton AsherFRSEFRAS (23 July 1926 – 26 December 2022) was a British linguist and educator specialised inDravidian languages. He was afellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1964), afellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1991) and anhonorary fellow of theSahitya Akademi.
Asher was born inGringley-on-the-Hill,Nottinghamshire,England, on 23 July 1926 to Ernest and Doris (Hurst) Asher. He won a scholarship to study at theKing Edward VI Grammar School atRetford, Nottinghamshire. He completed hisBachelor of Arts in 1950 and was certified in the phonetics French in 1951 from theUniversity College London. He did doctoral research on 16th-centuryFrench literature and received aPh.D. in 1955 from the University College London.[1]
Asher died on 26 December 2022 at the age of 96.[2][3]
After Asher received his Ph.D., he was offered two lectureships: atThe School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and at the Renaissance French of theUniversity College of North Staffordshire. He opted for SOAS and spent four years at its Department ofIndia,Pakistan andCeylon (now Sri Lanka) under theDepartment of Linguistics doing linguistic theoretical research inTamil language.[1]
Asher joined the Department of General Linguistics at theUniversity of Edinburgh in 1965. He was Professor of Linguistics from 1977, was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1986 to 1989 and retired as a Vice Principal in 1993.[4]
Asher served as the President of International Association for Tamil Research from 1983 to 1990.[1]
Asher was a visiting professor of Tamil at theUniversity of Chicago (1961–1962), of linguistics at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1967), of Malayalam and Tamil at theMichigan State University (1968), of DoctorR. P. Sethu Pillai Silver Jubilee Endowment at theUniversity of Madras (1968), of linguistics at theUniversity of Minnesota (1969), ofCollège de France,Paris (1970), of linguistic and International communication at theInternational Christian University, Tokyo (1994–95), and of 20th-century Malayalam Literature at theMahatma Gandhi University,Kottayam,Kerala (1995–1996).[1]
The Tamil scholarMu. Varadarajan introduced Asher to theSangam literature and to the works of Tamil writersSubramania Bharati,Bharathidasan, andAkilan. In 1971, Asher wrote his first book on TamilmA Tamil Prose Reader with R. Radhakrishnan. He published a second book in 1973,Some Landmark in the History of Tamil Prose.[1] He publishedNational Myths in Renaissance France: Francus, Samothes and the Druids (1993),Studies on Malayalam Language and Literature (1997),Malayalam (1998) co-authored with T. C. Kumari,V. M. Basheer: Svatantryasamara Kathakal (V. M. Basheer: Stories of the Freedom Movement, 1998),Basheer: Malayalattinte Sargavismayam (critical essays on the novels and stories of Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, 1999),Colloquial Tamil: The Complete Course for Beginners (1992) with E. Annamalai, andWind Flowers: Contemporary Malayalam Short Fiction (2004) with V. Abdulla.[1][4]
Asher translated theMalayalam novelistThakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's 1947 published workThottiyude Makan asScavenger's Son in 1975. He publishedMe Grandad'ad an Elephant: Three Stories of Muslim Life in South India in 1980 which collectively translated three workks by another Malayalam novelist,Vaikom Muhammad Basheer:Balyakalasakhi (Childhood Friend, 1944),Ntuppuppakkoranendarnnu (My Grandad Had an Elephant, 1951), andPathummayude Aadu (Pathumma's Goat, 1959).[1] Asher mentioned that the translation for the works of Basheer and Thakazhi ahd been challenging because of their "unparalleled" style and content.[5]
In 2000, he translatedAtlas of the World's Languages (1994) intoJapanese asSekai Minzoku Gengo Chizu. In 2002, Asher translated the Malayalam novelist and short-story writerK. P. Ramanunni'sdebut novelSufi Paranja Katha, published in 1993, asWhat the Sufi said with N. Gopalakrishnan.[4]
He edited theEncyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (1994),Atlas of the World's Languages (1994) with Christopher Moseley,Concise History of the Language Sciences from the Sumerians to the Cognitivists withE. F. K. Koerner (1995), andLinguisticoliterary: A Festschrift for Professor D.S. Dwivedi withRoy Harris.[1][4]
In 1964, Asher was selected as afellow ofRoyal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London. In 1983, Asher was awarded the Gold Medal by theKerala Sahitya Akademi for "distinguished services" in Malayalam.[1] He was elected as afellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1991.[6] In 2007, theSahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, elected Asher as anHonorary fellow.[1] In 2018, Asher was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh in recognition of his contributions to linguistics.
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