The significance and role of István Kótyuk’s work in Transcarpathian Hungarian science and education in the mother tongue
Authors: Bárány Erzsébet , Beregszászi Anikó , Gazdag Vilmos 
Published: December 2022

István Kótyuk, who passed away in the autumn of 2020, is a famous Hungarian linguist, translator, lexicographer and author of numerous textbooks for schools with Hungarian language of instruction in Transcarpathia. István Kótyuk’s activities were very diverse. Scientific research, teaching, organizing and translating activities and work in the field of Hungarian and Ukrainian lexicography are only some of the most important achievements of the scientist.

István Kótyuk was born on 11 January 1934 in the village of Rativtsi, then part of Czechoslovakia, now in the Uzhhorod district of Ukraine. In 1949, he was admitted to the Mukachevo Teachers’ College, which operated in Khust until 1950. In 1953 he graduated as a primary school teacher and in the same year he started studying at the Hungarian Language Department of the Pedagogical College in Uzhhorod. The Pedagogical College was soon closed down, and he continued his studies at the Uzhhorod State University, where he graduated in 1958 with a degree in Russian language and literature. After that, he worked first at the editorial office of the Zakarpatska Pravda (Carpathian True Word) and then at the regional radio station. In 1963, the Hungarian Language and Literature Department of the Uzhhorod State University was established, where he was appointed as a teacher of Hungarian language and literature. During his 30 years there, he taught various subjects: modern Hungarian (morphology and syntax), dialectology, historical grammar of the Hungarian language and other special courses in the Hungarian language. István Kótyuk worked at Uzhhorod State University until 1994. In 1997, he accepted an invitation from the newly established Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education and taught Hungarian grammar to the students, first at the Linguistics Department and then, after the Hungarian language and literature section of the Philology Department was established, to the students of that department. In the middle of the 60s of the last century István Kótyuk started to investigate the Hungarian dialect of the historical Uzh county. His research included the phonetic, vocabulary, formal, syntactic and stylistic features of the dialect, as well as the Eastern Slavic influences in the dialect. He also wrote his doctoral dissertation on this topic, which he defended in 1974 under the title Украинские заимствования в ужанском венгерскoм говоре (Ukrainian loanwords in the Hungarian Uzh dialect). With several years of active research, he contributed to the creation of the All-Carpathian Language Atlas (1989–2003) and the Dictionary of Transcarpathian Hungarian Dialects (the glossaries of which were also published in Acta Hungarica). Besides his scientific activities, István Kótyuk also did a lot of work in the field of education. Since 1971, he wrote 16 textbooks approved by the Soviet and later by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science for grades 4–11 in secondary schools of Transcarpathia with Hungarian language of instruction, some of which have been published several times. As a result, several generations of Transcarpathian Hungarian schoolchildren have been able to acquire knowledge of their mother tongue from the textbooks compiled by István Kótyuk.

István Kótyuk’s work has been recognised with numerous awards. His wisdom, his knowledge, his perseverance, his humanity remain an example for us. We cherish his memory with a grateful heart.