Early Life and Education
Swadesh was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrant parents from Bessarabia. His parents were multilingual, and Yiddish, some Russian, and English were his first languages.
Swadesh earned his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago, where he began studying with the linguist Edward Sapir. He followed Sapir to Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. (1933). Inspired by Sapir's early lists of word similarities between Native American languages, he began a life work in comparative linguistics.
Read more about this topic: Morris Swadesh
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“A good education is another name for happiness.”
—Ann Plato (1820–?)