August Ahlqvist

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

Ahlqvist studied at the University of Helsinki, philosophy and philology and began during his studies on the research of the Finnish language family to specialize. To the " Finnish language " to clear the way to a generally applicable and accepted written language freely, and thus enable a " Finnish national literature ", founded Ahlqvist 1847, the magazine Suometar. Under the pseudonym for Oskanen authored many professional and also some literary contributions.

Ahlqvist dealt with later, preferably the language of Votiaks whose grammar he wrote the first and traveled 1853-58 Northern Russia and Siberia to the study of linguistics, the result of which he was able to publish research in the area of the Ural-Altaic languages ​​in his mehrbändigem works. A description of his journey himself appeared in 1860 under the title Muistelmia matkoilta Wenäjällä Ruosina.

As a full professor of Finnish language and literature Ahlqvist taught at the University of Helsinki. As such, he also dabbled in the field of fiction and published an anthology Säkeniä " ( " Spark " ) More successful was his work as a translator from German, . Several works of Friedrich Schiller ( The Song of the Bell, Love and Intrigue etc. ) he transferred into Finnish.

Works (selection)

• Research in the area of the Ural-Altaic languages. Publisher Eggers, St. Petersburg 1861-94 Vol 1 attempt at Moksha - Mordovian grammar together with the texts and dictionary. 1861
• Vol 2 The Kuturwörter the West Finnish languages. 1875
• Vol 3 language texts and words collection. 1880
• Vol 4.1 Wogulisches dictionary. 1891
• Vol 4.2 Wogulische language texts. 1894