Lauri Kettunen

Lauri Einari Kettunen (September 10, 1885 – February 26, 1963) was a Finnish linguist. He studied Finnish dialects and the Finnic languages, and he worked as a professor at the University of Tartu and the University of Helsinki.

Early life and education Kettunen was born in Joroinen, Finland, the son of the farmers Paul Paulsson Kettunen (1845–1921) and Hilda Augusta Carlsdotter Kettunen (née Wentin, 1850–1901). He graduated from the Kuopio Finnish Community School in 1905, He received his licentiate in 1912 and a year later defended his doctoral dissertation. Kettunen's doctoral dissertation, Lautgeschichtliche Untersuchung über den kodaferschen Dialekt, dealt with the phonetic history of the of Estonian.

Lauri Kettunen participated in the activities of the , the Finno-Ugrian Society, and the Finnish Literature Society. In more than one controversial issue, only later research has been able to demonstrate the correctness of the position of the "pettifogger Kettunen". In language organization, Kettunen often represented a more liberal position than Hakulinen and , whose textbook Hyvää ja huonoa suomea (Good and Bad Finnish) was countered by Kettunen with the textbook Hyvää vapaata suomea (Good Free Finnish).

In addition to his academic career, Lauri Kettunen was a fiction writer. He wrote prose, poetry, and plays. Some of Kettunen's fiction was published under the pseudonym Toivo Hovi. Kettunen translated the poems of the Estonian poet Bernard Kangro into Finnish and wrote his own collection of Estonian poetry, called Südame sillad (Bridges of the Heart, 1960).

Expeditions The culture of tribal peoples and its development was Kettunen's passion.

In 2005, the conference Lauri Kettunen 120 was held in Tartu.

In the spring of 2024, the Mother Tongue Society, headed by , started collecting donations for a memorial to Lauri Kettunen in Tartu.