English as the second minor subject, the first compulsorily being Latin (a language that he hated from then on). He was one of a large number of students who appealed for Latin to be made voluntary, but the appeal was unsuccessful. Thanks to his need for an income, obtaining a Master's degree (in French) took Jespersen a decade, but the delays may well have determined his "habits of wide and self-motivated study".

Jespersen studied under the linguists Karl Verner, Hermann Möller