19 June – Maria Pshepiurska-Ovcharenko, linguist and researcher of dialects, is born

On 19 June 1909, Maria Przepiurska-Ovcharenko, a Ukrainian linguist, researcher of dialects and language history, was born.

Biography

Maria Przepiurska-Ovcharenko was born in the village of Tarnavka (now part of Poland). She graduated from the Jagiellonian and Charles University. She taught in Lviv, Czechoslovakia, and after emigrating in 1949, she also worked at universities in the United States. In particular, she was a professor of Slavic languages at Eastern Illinois University.

She is the author of monographs on the Nadsian dialects, as well as works on the history of the Ukrainian language, speech culture, and literary studies. She collaborated with the Institute of Linguistics in Lviv and was one of the compilers of the Ukrainian-Polish Dictionary. She was also a representative of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (since 1952) and the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.

She worked at the Lviv Department of the Institute of Linguistics from 1940, in particular in the dictionary sector, on the Ukrainian-Polish dictionary. Mariia Pshepiurska-Ovcharenko also conducted field research on Nadsianske dialects, studies in dialectology, history of the Ukrainian literary language, Ukrainian language culture, and literary studies.

Works

Over the course of many decades, the linguist has managed to present many works.

Works by Maria Pshepiurska-Ovcharenko:

• ‘The Language of Ukrainians of Nadsyannia’ (1986);
• ‘On the Borders of the Nadsyannia Dialect’ (1954);
• ‘Nadsyannia Dialect’ (1938);
• articles on the history of the Ukrainian language, language culture, and Ukrainian literature:
• ‘Is it a new stage of Russification?’ (1980), etc.
• ‘The Spiritual Crisis of Pavlo Tychyna’ (1978);
• ‘The Language of the New Testament Translation by Pylyp Morachevsky’ (1988);
• ‘Ivan Zylynsky (1879-1952)’ (1962).

His works also include works on Ukrainian dialectology (in particular, the monograph ‘Nadsianskyi Govir’), the history of the Ukrainian literary language (‘The Emphasis of Franko’s Poetry’) and literature (about Serhii Yefremov, Todos Osmachka, Mykola Hohol), school textbooks (‘Golden Gate’).

As a reminder, Ukrainian writer and poet Ivan Nechytailo was born on 18 June.