Einar Haugen

Einar Ingvald Haugen (pronEng|ˈhaʊgən) (April 19, 1906 - June 20, 1994) was an American linguist and Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University.

Haugen was born in Sioux City, Iowa to Norwegians from the town of Oppdal in Norway. As a young child, the family moved back to Oppdal for a few years, but then returned to the United States. He attended Morningside College in Sioux City but transferred to St. Olaf College to study with Ole Edvart Rølvaag, where he earned his B.A. in 1928. He immediately went on to graduate studies in linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in 1931.

Haugen joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1931, where he stayed until 1962. He was made Victor S. Thomas Professor of Scandinavian and Linguistics at Harvard University in 1964, and stayed here until his retirement in 1975. Haugen served as president of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study.

Haugen is credited for having pioneered the field of sociolinguistics and being a leading scholar within the field of Norwegian-American studies, including Old Norse studies. Perhaps his most important work was "The Norwegian language in America; A study in bilingual behavior" (ISBN 0-253-34115-9). In addition to several important works within these fields, he wrote the authoritative work on the dialect of his ancestral home of Oppdal and a book entitled "The Ecology of Language", with which he pioneered a new field of linguistics later called Ecolinguistics.

Haugen also wrote "Norwegian American Dictionary/Norsk engelsk ordbok" (ISBN 0-299-03874-2).

External links

* [http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/05.24/16-haugen.html Memorial minute from Harvard University]