Article published In:
Historiographia LinguisticaVol. 5:3 (1978) ► pp.221–226
Andreas Kempe (1622–89) and the Languages Spoken in Paradise
Several textbooks in general linguistics (by Crystal, Fromkin & Rodman, and Waterman) mention a 17th-century Swede who maintained that, in Paradise, God spoke Swedish, Adam Danish, and the serpent French. The name of this Swede is Andreas Kempe (not Kemke, as given in the above-mentioned books), a religious dissenter, persecuted in his Lutheran homeland. In this paper it is shown that the view that Swedish was the original language agrees with that of his contemporary scholars. The statement on Danish and French, however, appears in a context where it is clear that it was to be interpreted as an expatriate’s attempt to ridicule his adversaries among the Swedish clergy, and should not, therefore, be quoted as a serious opinion.
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Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Lauzon, Matthew J.
1996.
Language and the History of Thought. Edited by Nancy Struever. Historiographia Linguistica 23:3 ► pp. 445 ff. 
Metcalf, George J.
1980. Theodor Bibliander (1504–1564) and the Languages of Japheth’s Progeny. Historiographia Linguistica 7:3 ► pp. 323 ff.
Thomason, Sarah & William Poser
2020. Fantastic Linguistics. Annual Review of Linguistics 6:1 ► pp. 457 ff.
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