ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Diedrich Hermann Westermann

Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a man who lived a long time ago and was very interested in studying different languages that people spoke. When we talk, we use words to communicate with each other, and different groups of people use different types of words that make up their language. Mr. Westermann was very interested in learning about these different types of words and how he could understand them better.

He spent a lot of time traveling to different parts of the world to study and learn about these different languages. He was particularly interested in languages that were spoken in countries in Africa, which is a big continent that has a lot of different cultures and languages. One of the things he did was write a big book that explained how different languages in Africa were related to each other.

Mr. Westermann was very smart and worked very hard to learn as much as he could about these different languages. He wanted to help people understand each other better, even if they came from different parts of the world and spoke a language that was different from their own. This helped people to be less afraid of each other and work together to make the world a better place.