Karl Verner
Verner’s interest in linguistics began to form, quite paradoxically, not through the typical scenario of meeting an advanced linguist who would become his mentor. His interest in linguistics would form during his school years in the lessons of geography that he attended. Unlike many other geography teachers, Mr Erslev also taught his students about linguistic and social aspects of life in the countries they covered in the programme. Mr Erslev thus treated his subject contrastively and given the fact that Verner appreciated Erslev’s teaching a lot, it is possible to say that Verner’s contrastive linguistic method was born in his geography lessons.