Early Years and Studies
Van der Tuuk was born in Malacca (part of the Dutch East Indies at that time), where his father, a Dutch lawyer, had settled and had married a half German and half Dutch Eurasian wife named Louisa. Her surname being Neubronner, it was added as a middle name to “Herman”. In 1825, the Treaty of London (1824) took effect, and Malacca became British in exchange for Bengkulu (a region in Sumatra). As a consequence, the Van der Tuuk family moved to Surabaya on the Isle of Java.
At the age of about twelve, Van der Tuuk was sent to the Netherlands, where he attended grammar school and in 1840, aged sixteen, took the entrance exam to Groningen University. He read law, but his interests were in the field of linguistics, and in 1845 he moved to Leiden University to read Arabic and Persian with Th.W. Juynboll, a famous scholar in Arabic studies. Van der Tuuk also read Sanskrit and acquired a thorough grounding in Malay.
Read more about this topic: Herman Neubronner Van Der Tuuk
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