WIvar Andreas Aasen was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright, and poet. He is best known for having assembled from dialects one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Nynorsk.
WJohannes Aavik was an Estonian philologist and Fennophile who played a significant role in the modernization and development of the Estonian language.
WMikael Agricola was a Finnish Lutheran clergyman who became the de facto founder of literary Finnish and a prominent proponent of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden, including Finland, which was a Swedish territory at the time. He is often called the "father of literary Finnish".
WCostache or Kostake Aristia was a Wallachian-born poet, actor and translator, also noted for his activities as a soldier, schoolteacher, and philanthropist. A member of the Greek colony, his adolescence and early youth coincided with the peak of Hellenization in both Danubian Principalities. He first appeared on stage at Cișmeaua Roșie in Bucharest, and became a protege of Lady Rallou. She sponsored his voyage to France, where Aristia became an imitator of François-Joseph Talma.
WEliezer Ben‑Yehuda was a Hebrew lexicographer and newspaper editor. He was the driving force behind the revival of the Hebrew language in the modern era.
WBjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit", becoming the first Norwegian Nobel laureate. He was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in Norwegian public life and Scandinavian cultural debate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of The Four Greats among Norwegian writers, the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland. Bjørnson is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian National Anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet". Composer Fredrikke Waaler based a composition for voice and piano (Spinnersken) on text by Bjørnson, as did composer Anna Teichmüller.
WHu Shih (Chinese: 胡適; pinyin: Hú Shì; Wade–Giles: Hu2 Shih4; 17 December 1891 – 24 February 1962), also known as Hu Suh in early references, was a Chinese diplomat, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, and politician. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China's New Culture Movement, was a president of Peking University, and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He had a wide range of interests such as literature, philosophy, history, textual criticism, and pedagogy. He was also an influential redology scholar and held the famous Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本; Jiǎxū běn) for many years until his death.
WJosef Jungmann was a Czech poet and linguist, and a leading figure of the Czech National Revival. Together with Josef Dobrovský, he is considered to be a creator of the modern Czech language.
WSolomana Kanté was a Guinean writer and educator, best known as the inventor of the N'Ko alphabet for the Manding languages of Africa. The phrase "N'Ko" means "I say" in all Manding languages.
WVuk Stefanović Karadžić was a Serbian philologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the modern Serbian language. For his collection and preservation of Serbian folktales, Encyclopædia Britannica labelled him "the father of Serbian folk-literature scholarship." He was also the author of the first Serbian dictionary in the new reformed language. In addition, he translated the New Testament into the reformed form of the Serbian spelling and language.
WFerenc Kazinczy was a Hungarian author, poet, translator, neologist, the most indefatigable agent in the regeneration of the Hungarian language and literature at the turn of the 19th century. Today his name is connected with the extensive Language Reform of the 19th century, when thousands of words were coined or revived, enabling the Hungarian language to keep up with scientific progress and become an official language of the nation in 1844. For his linguistic and literary works he is regarded as one of the cultural founders of the Hungarian Reform Era along with Dávid Baróti Szabó, Ferenc Verseghy, György Bessenyei, Mátyás Rát and János Kis.
WKnud Knudsen was a Norwegian educator, author, linguist and philologist, known as the "The Father of Bokmål". He is best known for having assembled from Dano-Norwegian one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Bokmål, one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language.
WAdamantios Korais or Koraïs was a Greek scholar credited with laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment. His activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence and the emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as Katharevousa. Encyclopædia Britannica asserts that "his influence on the modern Greek language and culture has been compared to that of Dante on Italian and Martin Luther on German".
WMarius Nygaard was a Norwegian educator and linguist.
WMoses Schulbaum was an Galician Jewish Hebrew writer, translator, and lexicographer.
WScarlat Vasile Vârnav, or Sofronie Vârnav, was a Moldavian and Romanian political figure, philanthropist, collector, and Orthodox clergyman. The scion of an aristocratic family, he was made to study for a career in the church, but fled Moldavia and studied abroad. Acquainted with the Romanian liberal movement, and an ardent Romanian nationalist, he helped establish bodies of intellectuals dedicated to cultural and political cooperation across the Danubian Principalities and beyond—including, in 1846, the Romanian library of Paris. His purchase of mainly Baroque paintings, donated by him to Academia Mihăileană, forms the core of the Iași Museum of Art.
WIshwar Chandra Vidyasagar CIE, born Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, was an Indian educator and social reformer. His efforts to simplify and modernise Bengali prose were significant. He also rationalised and simplified the Bengali alphabet and type, which had remained unchanged since Charles Wilkins and Panchanan Karmakar had cut the first (wooden) Bengali type in 1780. He is considered the "father of Bengali prose".
WNoah Webster Jr. was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His "Blue-backed Speller" books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read. Webster's name has become synonymous with "dictionary" in the United States, especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language.
WHenrik Arnold Thaulow Wergeland was a Norwegian writer, most celebrated for his poetry but also a prolific playwright, polemicist, historian, and linguist. He is often described as a leading pioneer in the development of a distinctly Norwegian literary heritage and of modern Norwegian culture.
WJan Frans Willems was a Flemish writer and father of the Flemish movement.