Géza Bárczi was born 125 years ago

Abstract

Géza Bárczi is a prominent figure of Hungarian linguistics; he had an influential role in the history of that discipline both as a professor and as a researcher. The present commemoration was written by one of his former students, someone who knew him closely and finds it important to pass on the memory of her mentor. The paper enumerates the main events of Géza Bárczi’s professional life (from being a secondary school teacher to leading the department of Hungarian linguistics at the University of Debrecen and then at ELTE) and gives a broad picture of the various areas of his work, which covers almost all of the subfields of Hungarian language history (such as phoneme history, historical morphology, lexicology etc.). Géza Bárczi is also considered to be a great synthesis maker, something which particularly shows up in two of his works: he is the author of the first thorough etymological dictionary of the Hungarian language (1941) and of an extensive monograph called A magyar nyelv életrajza (A Biography of the Hungarian Language). He also had an important role in the Society of Hungarian Linguistics, of which he was the president for 17 years. His lectures were unforgettable experiences for his students: he was always seeking for the truth in his research and his way of presentation was always known for its crystal clear logic and elegant style.