The dawn of Russian ungaristics: The experience of the first scientific Russian-language description of Hungarian

The article presents a brief analysis of the first Hungarian-Russian and Russian-Hungarian dictionaries as a phenomenon in Russian bilingual lexicography, dwelling on the importance of these dictionaries in the formation of Russian ungaristics, in particular in the creation of Russian-language terminology for grammatical descriptions of Hungarian. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the brief grammatical reference guide of Hungarian in the Russian-Hungarian Dictionary, compiled with direct participation of the corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences D. V. Bubrich.

Working on the Russian-Hungarian Dictionary, D. V. Bubrich aimed to remedy a significant drawback of the Hungarian-Russian Dictionary (published earlier in 1946) which lacked a systematic Russian-language description of at least the main grammatical features of Hungarian. Instead, it only provided a brief instruction for dictionary users and a short commentary on the verb conjugation tables printed at the end of the dictionary (with a number of incorrectly used grammatical terms).

In the Russian-Hungarian Dictionary published in 1947, D. V. Bubrich (with E. S. Haas as a co-author) presented a short grammatical reference guide on Hungarian that covered all the main aspects of grammar: phonetics, morphology, and syntax. The linguistic terminology used deserves special attention. In fact, it was the beginning of the creation of a terminology system for Russian-language descriptions of Hungarian.

The material of the grammar reference guide shows that D. V. Bubrich had his own opinion on a number of controversial issues of Hungarian grammar, in particular, on the presence and composition of cases, the composition of parts of speech, the status of verbal formations, etc. His basic linguistic Russian terminology has stood the test of time and is widely used today.