István Kótyuk and the Hungarian dialects of Transcarpathia

Abstract

István Kótyuk is known as a versatile scholar in Transcarpathia and beyond the borders of his homeland. He is known to dialectologists primarily as a researcher of the Ung-Vidék dialect and of Ukrainian vocabulary, to lexicographers as a researcher of the Ukrainian-Hungarian and Hungarian-Ukrainian dictionary database edited by István Udvari, and to literary scholars as a literary translator. István Kótyuk is known among Transcarpathian Hungarians primarily as a textbook writer. We would like to talk about István Kótyuk as a dialectologist and Transcarpathian representative of applied dialectology. István Kótyuk published his first studies in various university publications and conference proceedings in Uzhhorod, and in 1974 he defended his thesis on Ukrainian dialects of the lower Ung River in Hungarian dialects. At the time, it was not possible to publish the thesis in print, and the few copies of the typed manuscript were difficult for specialists to access. It was well known that István Kótyuk was very fond of plants, especially flowers. He was not only interested in the care of plants, but also in their names. István Kótyuk took part in the linguistic-geographical research and landscape collections of the Hungarian Department in Uzhhorod. In addition to his work on dialect research, István Kótyuk also played a significant role in the practical application of the Hungarian language, in the implementation of the reform of mother tongue teaching and in the development of the theoretical background. As the leader of the working group that developed the Hungarian language curriculum in 2005, he considered it important to emphasise the issue of dialects and local language varieties. István Kótyuk has combined the traditions of classical dialectology with the main goals of applied dialectology in the study of dialects in Transcarpathian Hungarian: the results of his scientific research have been widely disseminated and used in practice through his textbooks. Independently of the official guides, he conveyed an objective, rational approach to non-standard varieties in the manuals he wrote, thus increasing the prestige of local language varieties.