Portal:Faroe Islands/Selected biography/4

Venceslaus Ulricus Hammershaimb (March 25, 1819 – April 4, 1909) was a Faroese Lutheran minister who established the modern orthography of Faroese, the language of the Faroe Islands, based on the Icelandic language, which like Faroese derives from Old Norse.

Hammershaimb created his spelling system for Faroese in 1846. It was etymological, with the vowels based on written Icelandic, rather than phonetically descriptive (as in for example Welsh.) For instance, the letter Eth (Ð) has no phonemes attached to it. In this Hammershaimb had accepted the advice of the Icelandic independence leader Jón Sigurðsson, who had seen the manuscript for his "Bemerkninger med Hensyn til den Færøiske Udtale" (Notes with Respect to Faroese Pronunciation); Hammershaimb considered that despite its artificiality, this was the only approach that would overcome the problems of differing dialects in the islands.