Csaba Grezsa, Consul General of Hungary in Cluj-Napoca, presented the most prestigious state award in Hungarian academic life to the 81-year-old winner after reading the official diploma. Accordingly, the linguist and ethnographer from Kalutásj, an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was awarded the Széchenyi Prize in recognition of his exceptionally valuable scientific career in researching the use of the mother tongue of the Hungarian minority, in examining the relationship between folk and folk culture, in addition to his teaching work as a school founder and his exemplary prize Sociolinguistics and dialectics.
Unitarian Bishop István Kovacs welcomed the attendees to the award ceremony held at the House of Religious Freedom, reminding them that after its renovation, the former episcopal residence was also dedicated to the Hungarian scholarly life.
In her eulogy, Undergraduate Assistant Professor Maria Ziccaye also takes stock of the laureate’s career as a researcher, educator and institution builder. He noted: The basic concept of Janos Bentek’s work is language retention, the essence of which he makes younger generations familiar with while he works as a university lecturer.
“In his work, he never distinguishes between more or less valuable linguistic variants. He knows no such distinction, since he considers all geographical and social variants to be of equal value,” he quoted the praise in the nomination for the award.
He noted that: During Janos Bentek’s research work, he also dealt with the case of the Hungarian language in Transylvania, the scientific treatment of vocabulary and landscape words of each region, sociolinguistics, and language rights. “The laureate is one of the most important Hungarian philologists of our time,” noted Maria Ziccay, adding that the professor also achieved significant results in the field of mother tongue nurturing, talent management, education and research organization.
As a university teacher, he has taught more than 50 degrees. His students can not only learn knowledge, but also have patience, empathy, and the ability to compromise. He also gave them a set of values and moral foundation as a reference.
As the founder of the institution, he restarted the ethnography course in Cluj, while being not only the leader, but also the “soul” of the Transylvanian Association of Mother Language Nurses. He was busy searching for talented students, and founded the Nilas Messi Talent Support Association, which since 2004 has been supporting talented Transylvanian children studying Hungarian who are in difficult financial situations. As the first Chairman of the Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he also laid the foundations and operational principles for the Cluj-Napoca Academic Committee.
In his acceptance speech, Janus Bentek said he felt he had learned more from his students during his 55-year teaching career than he could have given them. As he said, he was a bit surprised that he was nominated for the award, since there were no Széchenyi Prize recipients from Transylvania, and he thought it was “certainly good that the Academy and the Committee are looking into this as well”.
The linguist said, “I do not consider myself the greatest scientist in Transylvania, (.) I am more a servant of science than a practitioner of science,” and thanked those present for supporting his work over the decades.
Janos Bentek was born on July 7, 1941 in Korosovo. His research interests are Transylvanian Hungarian slang, popular culture and decorative arts, bilingualism, minority language use, and sociolinguistics. He has written and edited thirty-six books, authored seventy-eight book extracts and ninety-four journal articles, and has received many prestigious awards.
(MTI)
