Pekka Lehtimäki

Pekka Lehtimäki, 2012

Pekka Raimo Olavi Lehtimäki (born September 26, 1934 in Terijoki ; † March 1, 2013 in Pirkkala ) was a Finnish dialectologist and until 1999 professor of fen studies at the University of Greifswald .

Life

Pekka Lehtimäki was born as the son of elementary school teachers in Terijoki (now part of Russia ) and grew up in Hämeenkyrö . In 1954 he graduated from high school in Ikaalinen . He studied Finnish language and Finnish history at the University of Turku , graduating in Helsinki in 1961 . Since it was founded in 1959, he has worked as an assistant in the Finnish dialect archive, for which he has collected over 1,200 hours of material in 140 parishes over the years.

Lehtimäki began his academic career in 1963 as a Finnish language lecturer at the University of Münster , where he worked for eight years. In 1971 he moved back to Finland and was assistant professor of Finnish language at Tampere University for two years before becoming assistant professor of Finnish language at the same university in 1973 , which he held until 1994. In between he returned to Germany and taught at the University of Göttingen as a visiting professor for Finnish language and culture from 1981 to 1983 . In 1994 he moved to Germany again, where he held the professorship for fencing studies at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald from 1994 to 1999 . Here, among other things, with the help of bequests from his academic teachers and his German and Finnish friends, he was able to close large gaps in the library holdings that had arisen between 1945 and 1989.

Act

It has always been important to Lehtimäki to share his specialist knowledge with the interested public, for example in his language columns in the Finnish daily Aamulehti . He was particularly familiar with the dialects of Western Uusimaa . These were also the subject of his doctoral thesis, defended at the University of Helsinki in 1972, entitled: oi- ja ei-nominit Länsi-Uudenmaan murteissa. Lehtimäki published three monographs on Finnish regional dialects: In Tammelan murrekirja (1989) and Karkkilan murrekirja (1997) he published samples of dialects from those areas whose dialects he had devoted a large part of his dialectological research to. The volume Hämeenkyrön murrekirja (2002) contains dialectal narratives of the area in which Lehtimäki also spent his childhood. The generally understandable summary of the characteristics of the respective dialect at the end of the books made them easy to understand even for laypeople.

In several studies he also dealt with the linguistic development of his Finnish-German bilingual son.

In 2008, Pekka Lehtimäki published the children's book "Yllärien ylläri - Venneri vaarin ja muorin mökillä."

Many of Lehtimäki's students made and still make important contributions to the development of Finnish-German relations, culturally, economically and scientifically. Lehtimäki has also z. For example, through his work in a Finnish-German-Dutch dialectologist group, he has earned the recognition of Finnish linguistic research in Germany.

Works (selection)

• Hämeenkyrön murrekirja. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2002, ISBN 951-746-380-4 .
• Languages ​​in Finland and Estonia. Edited by Pekka Lehtimäki. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999, ISBN 3-447-04153-6 .
• Liistoin Kallei Karkkilasta: murreretki Uudellemaalle. Porvoo: WSOY, 1997, ISBN 951-0-21873-1 .
• Tammelan murrekirja. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1989. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia, ISBN 951-717-585-X .
• Oi- ja ei-nominit Länsi-Uudenmaan murteissa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1972. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia, ISBN 951-717-015-7 .
• Yllärien ylläri: Venneri vaarin ja muorin mökillä. Tampere: Pilot-kustannus, 2008, ISBN 978-952-464-811-0 .

literature

• Virittäjä 3/2013 (p. 421–423)