Pompeu Fabra

Pompeu Fabra
Pompeu Fabra in 1933.
Born	(1868-02-20)20 February 1868 Gràcia, Barcelona
Died	25 December 1948(1948-12-25) (aged 80) Prada de Conflent, France
Nationality	Spanish
Occupation	professor, engineer and linguist

Pompeu Fabra i Poch (Catalan pronunciation: [pumˈpɛw ˈfaβɾə]) (Gràcia, Barcelona, 20 February 1868 - Prada de Conflent, 25 December 1948) was a Spanish engineer and grammarian. He was the main author of the normative reform of contemporary Catalan language.

Pompeu Fabra was born in Gràcia, which at that time was still separate from Barcelona, in 1868. He was the last of twelve children born to Josep Fabra i Roca and his wife Carolina Poch i Martí. When Pompeu was six, the family moved to Barcelona.

From a fairly young age Fabra dedicated himself to the study of the Catalan language. Through the journal and publishing house L'Avenç, he participated in a campaign to reform Catalan orthography between 1890-92. He published Tractat d'ortografia catalana with the writer and publisher Jaume Massó i Torrents and Joaquim Casas i Carbó, a famous lawyer and writer, in 1904.

Despite his personal interest in linguistics, Fabra studied industrial engineering in Barcelona and in 1902 accepted a chair of chemistry position at the School of Engineering in Bilbao. During his tenure in Bilbao, Fabra participated actively in the First International Congress of the Catalan Language held in 1906. This event gave him a certain prestige in the field of Catalan linguistics. In 1911, he returned to Barcelona to become a professor (catedràtic) of Catalan — a position created by the diputació (local government) of Barcelona — and a member of the department of philology at the newly created Institut d'Estudis Catalans, of which he would later become president. In 1912 he published his Gramática de la lengua catalana (in Spanish).

The Institute published the Normes ortogràfiques in 1913, the Diccionari ortogràfic in 1917, and its official Gramàtica catalana in 1918. That same year, Fabra also edited the textbook Curs mitjà de gramàtica catalana, published by l'Associació Protectora de l'Ensenyança Catalana. His "Converses filològiques," first published in the newspaper "La Publicitat," were later collected as "Popular Barcino." Probably his most famous work was the Diccionari General de la Llengua Catalana (1932), the first edition of which later became the Institute's official dictionary.