An Amateur Orientalist? Václav Zelenka (1892-1979): His First Dictionary and Last Travelogue

Abstract

Václav Zelenka was an industrial school teacher with strong interest in travel, Oriental languages and ethnography. He travelled extensively in the 1920S and 1930s.

His major contribution to Czechoslovak Oriental studies consists of his interest in Colloquial Arabic. He published several short textbooks and a large dictionary of colloquial Arabic, which was edited and printed in Cairo with a substantial help of Egyptian philologists.

Keywords

• Egypt
• scholar
• colloquial Arabic
• Arab culture
• Arabic dictionaries