Andrew Dalby

Andrew Dalby (born 1947 in Liverpool) is an English linguist, translator and historian who has written articles and several books on a wide range of topics including food history, language, and Classical texts.

Dalby studied Latin, French and Greek at the Bristol Grammar School and University of Cambridge. Here he also studied Romance languages and linguistics, earning a bachelor's degree in 1970.

Dalby worked for fifteen years at Cambridge University Library, eventually specialising in Southern Asia. He gained familiarity with some other languages because of his work there, where he had to work with foreign serials and afterwards with South Asia and Southeast Asian materials. He also wrote articles on multilingual topics linked with the library and its collections.

In 1982 and 1983 he collaborated with Sao Saimong in cataloguing the Scott Collection of manuscripts and documents from Burma (especially the Shan States) and Indochina. Dalby later published a short biography of the colonial civil servant and explorer J. G. Scott, who formed the collection. To help him with this task, he took classes in Cambridge again in Sanskrit, Hindi and Pali and in London in Burmese and Thai.

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