Leslau was born in
Krzepice, a small town near
Częstochowa,
Poland.[1] When he was a child his family was very poor, and after contracting
tuberculosis he usually had to keep a thermometer with him to monitor his body temperature, although the reasons for this are unknown. He was orphaned by the age of 10, and was raised by his brother, and received a
yeshiva education.[2]
Leslau was arrested by the French police and sent to an internment camp in the
Pyrenees where he spent the harsh winter of 1939-1940 with his wife and child. He was later moved to
Camp des Milles, a
concentration camp near
Aix-en-Provence.[5] However, with the assistance of an international aid group, he escaped with his family before the
Nazis took over the camp in 1942.[6]
Escaping to the
United States, he later became a
naturalizedU.S. citizen.[7] He settled in
New York City, and received a
Guggenheim Fellowship[8] to continue his studies of the Semitic languages in
Ethiopia. He traveled throughout the country, recording endangered Ethiopian languages. For one language,
Gafat, Leslau was able to locate only four speakers. It became extinct shortly thereafter.
Leslau specialized in previously unrecorded and unstudied
Semitic languages of Ethiopia. His first trip to Ethiopia in 1946 was funded by a
Guggenheim fellowship.[3]
South Arabia and Yemen
In 1950, Leslau traveled to South Arabia and Yemen. There he made field recordings at gatherings of South Arabian Bedouins and
Yemenite Jews. In 1951, the recordings were issued by
Folkways Records as Music of South Arabia in their "ethnic" series, FE-4221. The recordings, as well as Leslau's liner notes, are available for download from
Smithsonian Folkways.[9]
1968: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background. Part 3: Soddo. University of California Publications. Near Eastern Studies, vol. 11.
1969: Hebrew Cognates in Amharic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. (
ISBN3-447-00555-6)
1973: English-Amharic Context Dictionary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xviii + 1503 p. (
ISBN3-447-01482-2)
1976: Concise Amharic Dictionary. (Reissue edition: 1996) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. (
ISBN0-520-20501-4)
1979: Etymological Dictionary of Gurage (Ethiopic). 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. (
ISBN3-447-02041-5)
1981: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background. Part 4: Muher. Äthiopistische Forschungen, no. 11. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. (
ISBN3-515-03657-1)
1982. "Harari riddles." Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 29 (1982): 39-85.
1982: Gurage Folklore: Proverbs, beliefs, and riddles. Studien zur Kulturkunde, no. 63. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. (
ISBN3-515-03513-3)
1983: Ethiopians Speak: Studies in Cultural Background. Part 5: Chaha and Ennemor. Äthiopistische Forschungen, no. 16. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
1987: Comparative dictionary of Ge‛ez (Classical Ethiopic) : Gǝ‛ǝz-English/English-Gǝ‛ǝz with an index of the Semitic roots. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xlix + 813 p.
1988: Fifty Years of Research: Selection of articles on Semitic, Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, xlv + 503 p. (
ISBN3-447-02829-7)
1989: Concise dictionary of Gǝ‛ǝz (Classical Ethiopic). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 247 p.
1990: Arabic Loanwords in Ethiopian Semitic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. (
ISBN3-447-03000-3)
Kaye, Alan S. (ed.), Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his 85th birthday, November 14, 1991. 2 Vols. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz 1991, lxviii. + 1719 p. (
ISBN3-447-03168-9).
Hudson, Grover (ed.), Essays on Gurage Language and Culture: Dedicated to Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday, November 14, 1996. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1996, 239 p. (
ISBN3-447-03830-6).