Talk:Stephen Wurm

Name

I understand that umlauts are considered sexy but the name of this guy is WURM. Please move. --217.80.84.111 14:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Whät ïs än ümläüt? Äm Ï sëxÿ? Seriously, I'm neutral in this but I think that someone who helped create this page really believed his name was spelt with an umlaut. Maybe he got rid of the umlaut when he moved to Oz.. if so, feel free to note it and move the page. Zargulon 17:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I just moved the page based on how User:Kwamikagami spells in the various articles about Papuan languages. I suggest you ask him. BTW, anons can't move pages. —Khoikhoi 02:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Stephen never spelled his name with an umlaut. I'll make the change (soon). Also he said that he was born stateless (and remained so until he came to Australia. I'll check on this. Dougg 09:00, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

If Stephen's father died before his son's birth, what about then of the story I've heard that Stephen was raised up in a family of a diplomat, moving from country to country and always learning rapidly the language of the new country? / 15 June 2006 (Voice from Finland)

That's not really a contradiction. His father was not necessary the diplomat in whose family Stephen was raised. Even if his father was really the diplomat, without the father, the family is still a diplomat's family, although the reason for travelling or moving might not be connected with his father's profession. However, this matter does merit clarification. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:49, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

This obituary, this, and especially this source are quite helpful in this regard. To quote the third source:

EARLY YEARS. Stephen was born in Budapest on August 19, 1922, the second child of Adolph Wurm and Anna Navroczky. He was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm and brought up mainly in Vienna and Hungary. Although his father-- director-general of a banking and insurance company--died before he was born, the Wurms were comfortably off. Stephen and his older sister had a rather privileged childhood that included nannies and travel to all parts of Europe. He attended the Real-Gymnasium in Vienna. Stephen was interested in languages even as a child and, by the time he had grown up, was fluent in about nine languages. He was a genuine rapid language learner, and before he was 40, was fluent in five of the Gennanic languages, five of the Romance languages, three Slavic languages, in Arabic, Swahili, Turkish, Uzbek, Mongol, Mandarin, Tok Pisin, and Police Motu, and could get by in perhaps 30 other languages--over 50 in all.

(Gennanic appears to be an OCR error for Germanic.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:20, 20 October 2014 (UTC)