Giovanni Spano
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 Portrait of Giovanni Spano in 1872
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| Born
| (
1803-03-03
)
3 March 1803
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| Died
| 3 April 1878
(1878-04-03)
(aged 75)
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| Church
| Catholic
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| Ordained
| 1830
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Giovanni Spano
(born
Ploaghe
, Sardinia, 3 March 1803; died
Cagliari
, Sardinia, 3 April 1878), also a priest and a
linguist
, is considered one of the first
archaeologists
to study the
Mediterranean
island of Sardinia.
After
elementary school
in which he learnt
Arabic
,
Greek
,
Hebrew
,
Italian
,
Latin
and
Sardinian
, he progressed to a
Sassari
seminary and in 1825 earned a degree in
theology
. He was ordained in 1830 and in 1854 became director of the Cagliari Athenaeum. In 1871 he was named
senator
of the
Kingdom of Italy
and professor in
Turin
.
He wrote the
Ortografia sarda nazionale, ossia grammatica della lingua loguderese paragonata all'italiana
(1840), in an attempt to find a single and unified
orthography
for the
Sardinian language
: the book, following the classification of the Italian
Francesco Cetti
, proposed the division of Sardinian into four dialects and a unified writing form based on Logudorese, an umbrella for a group of dialects spoken in villages (
biddas
) like
Bono
,
Bonorva
,
Bosa
,
Ghilarza
,
Macomer
,
Ozieri
, Ploaghe and
Sennori
.
He also wrote a Sardinian-Italian/Italian-Sardinian Dictionary (1851?1852), the four-volume Sardinian Archaeological Bulletin (1855?1861), the '
Guida della citta e dintorni di Cagliari
(1856), the
Guida del Duomo di Cagliari
(1856), and the
Storia e descrizione dell'Anfiteatro Romano di Cagliari
(1868).
When he died in 1878, the words "
Patriam dilexit, laboravit
" were inscribed on his
tomb
at
Bonaria
. A scientific college in Sassari is now named after him.
External links
[
edit
]
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