Summary:

Marjatta Aittola, Early comparative information about the Karelian and Finnish languages in 1787 and 1789 in the dictionary compiles by Peter Simon Pallas

Catherine II, supporter of enlightenment, continued the westernization of Russia begun by Peter I the Great by favoring foreign scientists. Among them was German professor and linguist Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1789), who at the time was also a specialist in several other branches of science. He directed a project that published a Comparative dictionary of all languages“(Sravnitelnye slovari vseh jazykov i naretšii sobrannye desnitšeju vsevysotšaišei osoby) in Russia in 1787 and 1789, a project that was also supported by Catherine II.

In this primarily Russian dictionary Pallas presented 273 words and a group of numerals in two hundred different languages. Included among these languages were Finnish and Karelian. Pallas’s dictionary did not present many verbs, but each language - for example Karelian - always had the same sequence number, making it easy to use the text to compare words in different languages.

Prior to Pallas’s dictionary, a few Finnish dictionary-type texts that supported teaching and study of Latin had appeared, but only one actual broader dictionary existed. This was Daniel Juslenius’s Suomalaisen Sana-Lugun Coetus from 1745. The manuscript of Christfrid Ganander’s dictionary had been completed already in 1787, but it was not printed until 1937. However, no Karelian dictionary existed, although some kind of glossary of Karelian words had been compiled earlier, but at least so far it has not been found.

The information about the Finnish language, for example, that was presented in Russian in Pallas’s Comparative dictionary of all languages was so precise and correct that he must have had plenty of reliable briefers and consultants assisting him in the compilation of the dictionary.

German geologist Renovanz, who studied East Karelia, had informed Pallas about his understanding of the Karelian name of a certain terrain term already in 1781, when Pallas published it in his text Neue Nordische Beiträge. Perhaps Renovanz had been one of the many consultants who also contributed to the compilation of the Karelian portion of the Comparative dictionary of all languages.

The Finnish vocabulary for his dictionary was gathered at least by the pastor of St. Petersburg’s Finnish parish, Johan Henrik Krogius (1728–1791). Other probable briefers who assisted Pallas in his dictionary work were at least Finnish professors Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1739–1808) and Erik Laxman (1737–1796), who both had done scientific work with Pallas.