Franz Nikolaus Finck

Who was Franz Nikolaus Finck?

Franz Nikolaus Finck was a German philologist, born in Krefeld. He was a professor of General Linguistics at the University of Berlin.

Finck visited the Aran Islands of Ireland, where he lived with speakers of Irish Gaelic. His research on the phonology of Irish resulted in the book Die araner mundart: ein beitrag zur erforschung des westirischen. This work was characteristic of Finck's emphasis on the study of remote dialects of languages.

He went on to work on a broad variety of languages, but was best known to his colleagues for his work on languages of the Caucasus. He also worked extensively on the Armenian language, compiling a grammar of that language.

Finck held the belief that all of the languages of the Caucasus were related.

Among his students was John Peabody Harrington.