January 24, 2018 marks the 145th anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov, a lexicographer who compiled a 4-volume explanatory and spelling dictionaries. In our small, but informative article, we will tell you about the life of the Russian philologist, his merits in linguistics, and we will give a few memoirs of colleagues about Ushakov.
Childhood
A talented linguist, the first researcher of Russian orthoepy, and part-time editor and compiler of one of the explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov was born on January 24 in the new style in Moscow in 1873. Together with his family, he lived at the intersection of Krestovozdvizhensky lane and Vozdvizhenka.
When little Dima was 2 years old, a tragedy occurred in the family: his father died - a successful Moscow ophthalmologist. Then the child was brought up in the house of his maternal grandfather. His grandfather served as Protopresbyter in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.
The boy received primary education at home.
- At 9 years old (in 1882), little Dima entered the Moscow gymnasium, where he studied for 6 years.
- In 1889, he transferred to the 7th grade of gymnasium No. 5, which was located on the corner of Bolshaya Molchanovka and Povarskaya.
- In 1891, a graduate of the gymnasium, Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov, whose biography we are considering, entered the university at the historical and philological faculty.
At that time, professor Ushakova was Professor Philip Fedorovich Fortunatov, not the last figure in Russian linguistics.
Scientific activity
After graduating from university, Ushakov enters the service of the school, where he has been teaching children the Russian language and literature for 17 years. In 1907, he simultaneously teaches at Moscow State University. His university teaching experience was over 28 years. During this time, Ushakov visited the positions of privat-docent, and then he was promoted to senior assistant, a little later he becomes a full-time assistant professor, and finally becomes a professor. In the late 1930s, Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov led the Slavic sector at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Throughout his scientific and pedagogical activities, Dmitry Nikolaevich gives lectures at various educational institutions. His speeches were heard at higher pedagogical courses, at the military pedagogical school, as well as at the Bryusov Literary Institute .
He wrote the first Russian textbook on linguistics, which was reprinted 9 times!
In January 1936, Ushakov was awarded the degree of Doctor of Linguistic Sciences, and after 3 years he becomes a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
When the terrible Great Patriotic War began, he was evacuated to Uzbekistan.
A year later, on April 17 in 1942, Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov died in the city of Tashkent.
Merits of a scientist, which every philologist needs to know about and not only
The people Dmitry Ushakov became famous as the author-compiler of the explanatory dictionary, which was published in the mid-1930s. Ushakov led the team of authors, which included no less talented scientists: Vinogradov, Vinokur, Ozhegov, Tomashevsky and other philologists.
In addition to the fact that the scientist compiled an explanatory dictionary, Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov made a contribution to the Russian language not only in the field of lexicography, but also in spelling and dialectology.
The scientist actively promoted the reform of Russian spelling, and at the beginning of the 20th century he published the book "Russian Spelling". The Academy of Sciences implemented the reform of Russian spelling only in 1918.
In 1915, Ushakov Dmitry Nikolaevich, whose photo you see below, headed the dialectological commission at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The purpose of this commission was to create a dialect map for the European part of the Soviet Union, it reflected the dialects of the Slavic peoples: Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
From the memoirs of contemporaries
- Avanesov Ruben Ivanovich, a Soviet linguist and colleague Dmitry Ushakov, admired his works in his memoirs. He noted that Ushakov developed and applied a weighty and multi-aspect litter system in stylistic terms. Today, in the dictionary entry for explanatory dictionaries, we see litters: book., Dig., Offic. other.
- Reformed Alexander Alexandrovich recalled that Ushakov loved to communicate with people. He actively interacted with teachers and students, actors, doctors, singers and officials of various departments that were illiterate. He noticed that Dmitry Nikolaevich taught his colleagues not to fence themselves off from the surrounding life, but to educate the Russian people.
Finally
So, our article has come to an end. The domestic philologist and linguist Dmitry Ushakov is an example of how to love your native language and work hard. And even in the evacuation in Tashkent, a year before his death, Dmitry Nikolaevich began to study the Uzbek language, and then composed a small Russian-Uzbek phrasebook.