John Melich He was born on September 16, 1872 in Szarvason, in an evangelical family of Slovak origin. His parents were among those Puritan peasants who worked tirelessly, who with tenacious work transformed the hard shale into productive land. His mother gave birth to eleven children and raised six. In addition to their native Slovak language, family members also spoke Hungarian fluently.
However, if the later linguistics teacher really wanted to talk intimately with his mother, he used the Slovak language even in adulthood.
Respect for linguistic facts
He was by far the best student in Szarvas primary school. Through the intercession of his teachers, in 1883 he was enrolled in the first class of the Lutheran high school of Szarvas, where he was strongly influenced by his Hungarian teacher, Endre Zsilinszky, father of Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, also born in Szarva. At the end of the third grade he received a reward because he knew Hungarian the best among the “tót” boys.
At the end of sixth grade, the extremely embarrassed boy dropped out of school in response to a scolding from a teacher he felt was unfair.
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and continued his studies at the Késmárk Lutheran Lyceum in Szepesség. He graduated in 1891 with excellent results. In the fall he enrolled as a Hungarian and German humanities student at the University of Cluj, where he quickly attracted the attention of József Szinnyei, professor of Hungarian linguistics and literary history. From him she acquired a distinct respect for linguistic facts. In 1895 he obtained his doctorate in humanities from the University of Budapest.
Since 1901 at the University of Budapest It is the determining part of Hungarian linguistics private teacher of the subject. His lessons covered foreign words, pronunciations, proper names, spelling, dictionaries and linguistic memories. His students included Géza Bárczi, László Gáldi, László Hadrovics, Miklós Kovalovszky, and Gyula Laziczius, who Introduction to Phonology In 1932 he dedicated his work to “Maestro Melich”. As a teacher of Slavic studies, he held three permanent colleges: Slavic peoples and languages, Old Church Slavic language, Slovak literary history (in his he use of the language: lake).
Honored of the Corvin chain
His scientific work has stood out in three areas in particular:
- elaborated the history of the ancient literature of the Hungarian dictionary,
- he also dealt with the earliest periods of Hungarian spelling
- deciphering the origins of numerous toponyms, personal names and foreign words, he laid the foundations of the philology of Hungarian settlement history and, together with his co-author, Zoltán Gombocz, wrote the important and monumental Hungarian Etymological Dictionary.
He was elected corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1902. Lecture occupying the chair Christian terminology of the Hungarian language he kept it under the title In 1920 he became a regular member of the Academy. His work of him was recognized with the Corvin crown in 1930 and the Corvin chain in 1939. From 1943 to 1947 he was the chief librarian of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1949 the MTA, reorganized on the Soviet model, excluded him from the ranks of its regular members and demoted him to a deliberative member without the right to vote. His exclusion was not affected by the fact that the Scientific Qualification Committee declared him a doctor of linguistics in 1952.
The Academy only rehabilitated him more than a quarter century after his death in 1989 when the general assembly overturned the downgrading of honorary, regular and correspondent members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, including János Melich, to deliberative member on October 31, 1949.
Szarvas has not forgotten his famous birth
He died on November 20, 1963, at the age of 91, in Budapest. He was buried five days later in the Rákoskeresztúr public cemetery. When, after twenty-five years, the rules of the cemetery required the removal of the grave, the Circle of Friends of the Alumni of Szarvas and the Circle of Friends of the city of Szarvas joined forces to transport the ashes of János Melich and his wife to the city, where they were buried in the Old Cemetery.
The people of Szarvas have not forgotten the famous native of the city, as today a street bears his name, a plaque was placed in his honor on the wall of his former school and his bust was inaugurated in 2019.
(Cover photo: Dr. János Melich, linguist, university professor, academic, doctor of linguistics on 19 October 1957. Photo: Edit Molnár / MTI)
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