Leslau, Wolf

Born in the small town of Krzepice, the Privislen region of the Russian Empire ^[1] in a poor family. He was sick with tuberculosis . Orphaned at ten years old, raised by his brother. He studied at the yeshiva ^[2] .

In order not to join the army, he renounced Polish citizenship, becoming a stateless person and moved to Vienna ^[2] , where until 1931 he studied Semitic languages ​​at the University of Vienna ^[3] .

Then he entered the Sorbonne , where he studied under the guidance of Marcel Cohen . He studied most Semitic languages, including Hebrew , Aramaic , Akkadian , Socotrian and Geez ^[4] .

He was arrested by the French police and sent to a concentration camp in the Pyrenees , spending the winter of 1939-1940 there under very difficult conditions. It was later transferred to the concentration camp near Aix-en-Provence ^[5] . An international relief group helped Leslau and his family leave the camp before being captured by the Nazis in 1942 ^[6] . He moved to the USA with his family, where he accepted citizenship ^[7] .

He settled in New York , receiving a Guggenheim scholarship ^[8] to continue his studies in Ethiopia, where he traveled since 1946 , exploring languages ​​that are on the verge of extinction. Leslau discovered only four carriers of one of them - Ghafat . This language soon died out.

After teaching at the , at the New School for Social Research and four years at Brandeis University ^[3] , in 1955 he became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles . Leslau played a key role in organizing the Department of Middle Eastern Studies ^[4] .

In 1965, in Addis Ababa, Leslau received the Haile Selassie Prize for Ethiopian research from the hands of the Emperor himself ^[9] . He was an honorary professor at the University of California until his death at a hundred years old in 2006 ^[5] . Until his death, he was actively engaged in research. He learned to work on a computer at the age of 80 ^[10] .

• 1938: Lexique Soqotri (sudarabique moderne) avec comparaisons et explications étymologiques . Paris: Klincksieck.
• 1941: Documents tigrigna: grammaire et textes . Paris: Libraire C. Klincksieck.
• 1945: Short Grammar of Tigré . Publications of the American Oriental Society, Offprint Series, No. 18. New Haven.
• 1945: Gafat Documents: Records of a South-Ethiopic language . American Oriental series, no. 28. New Haven.
• 1950: Ethiopic Documents: Gurage . New York: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 14.
• 1951: Falasha Anthology . Yale Judaica Series, vol. 6. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. ( ISBN 0-300-03927-1 )
• 1956: Étude descriptive et comparative du Gafat (éthiopien meridional) . Paris: Klincksieck, xx + 277 p.
• 1958: Ethiopic and South Arabic contributions to the Hebrew lexicon . Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 76 p.
• 1958: The verb in Harari . Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, x + 86 p.
• 1963: Etymological dictionary of Harari . Berkeley — Los Angeles, CA: Univ. of California Press, xv 240 p. - (University of California Publications; Near Eastern Studies, v. 1)
• 1965: An Amharic Conversation Book . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-00553-X )
• 1965: Ethiopians speak. Studies in cultural background . Part 1: Harari. Near Eastern Studies, no. 7. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 1965: An annotated bibliography of the Semitic languages ​​of Ethiopia. The Hague: Mouton.
• 1966: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background . Part 2: Chaha. University of California Publication. Near Eastern Studies, no. 9, 219 p.
• 1967: Amharic Textbook . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-00554-8 )
• 1968: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background . Part 3: Soddo. University of California Publications. Near Eastern Studies, vol. eleven.
• 1969: Hebrew Cognates in Amharic . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-00555-6 )
• 1973: English-Amharic Context Dictionary . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xviii + 1503 p. ( ISBN 3-447-01482-2 )
• 1976: Concise Amharic Dictionary . (Reissue edition: 1996) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ( ISBN 0-520-20501-4 )
• 1979: Etymological Dictionary of Gurage (Ethiopic) . 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-02041-5 )
• 1981: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background . Part 4: Muher. Äthiopistische Forschungen, no. 11. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. ( ISBN 3-515-03657-1 )
• 1982: Gurage Folklore: Proverbs, beliefs, and riddles . Studien zur Kulturkunde, no. 63. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. ( ISBN 3-515-03513-3 )
• 1983: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background . Part 5: Chaha and Ennemor. Äthiopistische Forschungen, no. 16. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
• 1987: Comparative dictionary of Ge‛ez (Classical Ethiopic): Gǝ‛ǝz-English / English-Gǝ‛ǝz with an index of the Semitic roots . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xlix + 813 p.
• 1988: Fifty Years of Research: Selection of articles on Semitic, Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xlv + 503 p. ( ISBN 3-447-02829-7 )
• 1989: Concise dictionary of Gǝ‛ǝz (Classical Ethiopic) . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 247 p.
• 1990: Arabic Loanwords in Ethiopian Semitic . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-03000-3 )
• 1992: Gurage Studies: Collected Articles . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xxix + 744 p. ( ISBN 3-447-03189-1 )
• 1995: Reference Grammar of Amharic . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. ( ISBN 3-447-03372-X )
• 1997: Ethiopic Documents: Argobba. Grammar and dictionary . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-03955-8 )
• 1999: Zway Ethiopic Documents . Äthiopistische Forschungen, no. 51. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-04162-5 )
• 2000: Introductory Grammar of Amharic . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xix + 232 p. ( ISBN 3-447-04271-0 )
• 2001: (with Thomas L. Kane) Amharic Cultural Reader . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-04496-9 )
• 2004: The Verb in Mäsqan as Compared with other Gurage Dialects . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ( ISBN 3-447-04905-7 )

• Segert, Stanislav & András JE Bodrogligeti (eds.), Ethiopian Studies: Dedicated to Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, November 14, 1981 by friends and colleagues . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1983, xii + 582 p. ( ISBN 3-447-02314-7 ).
• Kaye, Alan S. (ed.), Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his 85th birthday, November 14, 1991 . 2 Vols. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz 1991, lxviii. + 1719 p. ( ISBN 3-447-03168-9 ).
• Hudson, Grover (ed.), Essays on Gurage Language and Culture: Dedicated to Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday, November 14, 1996 . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1996, 239 p. ( ISBN 3-447-03830-6 ).