August Ahlqvist

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August Ahlqvist

August Engelbrekt Ahlqvist (born August 7, 1826 in Kuopio , † November 20, 1889 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish linguist.

Ahlqvist studied philosophy and philology at the University of Helsinki and began to specialize in research on the Finnish language family during his studies. Ahlqvist founded the magazine Suometar in 1847 in order to pave the way for the “Finnish language” to become a generally valid and recognized written language, and thus also to enable “Finnish national literature” . Under the pseudonym A. Oksanen wrote many technical and also some fiction articles.

Ahlqvist later dealt primarily with the language of the Votyaks , whose grammar he was the first to fix in writing, and traveled to northern Russia and Siberia from 1853 to 1858 for linguistic research, the results of which he was able to publish research in the field of the Ural-Altaic languages in his multi-volume work . A description of his trip himself appeared in 1860 under the title Muistelmia matkoilta Wenäjällä vuosina 1845–58 .

As full professor of Finnish language and literature , Ahlqvist taught at the University of Helsinki. As such, he also tried his hand at fiction and published an anthology " Säkeniä " ("Funken"). His work as a translator from German and French was more successful; several works by Friedrich Schiller ( Das Lied von der Glocke , Kabale und Liebe and much more) he translated into Finnish.

Works (selection)

  • Research into the Ural-Altaic languages . Eggers Verlag, St. Petersburg 1861–94
    • Vol. 1. Attempt at a Mokscha-Mordovian grammar with texts and vocabulary . 1861
    • Vol. 2. The cultural words of the Western Finnish languages . 1875
    • Vol. 3. Language texts and collection of words . 1880
    • Vol. 4.1 Vogul dictionary . 1891
    • Vol. 4,2 Vogul language texts . 1894
  • Wotisk grammar . Friis, Helsinki 1855
  • Muistelmia matkoilta Wenäjällä vuosina 1845–58 Petersburg 1860
  • Säkeniä .

Web links

Wikisource: August Ahlqvist  - Sources and full texts