Janów, Jan

Janów, Jan, b 22 November 1888 in Moshkivtsi, Kalush county, Galicia, d 17 December 1952 in Cracow. Polish philologist, dialectologist, educator; from 1946 full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A graduate of Lviv University (1913), he served as professor of Lviv University (1927–45) and then of Cracow University (1945–52). Janów wrote a number of works on Polish and Ukrainian philology and dialectology including Gwara małoruska Moszkowiec i Siwki Naddniestrzańskiej ... (The Little-Ruthenian Dialect of Moshkivtsi and Sivka-on-Dnister ..., 1926), Z fonetyki gwar rusińskich (From the Phonetics of Ruthenian Dialects, 1928), and Legendarno-apokryficzne opowieści ruskie o męce Chrystusa z uwzględnieniem zabytków staropolskich (Ruthenian Legendary and Apocryphal Tales on Christ’s Passion Taking into Account Old Polish Sources, 1931). He also wrote extensive introductions to Sebastian Jan Piskorski’s Żywot Barlaama i Jozafata (The Life of Barlaam and Josaphat, 1935) and Jan Sandecki-Malecki’s Ewangeliarz z początku XVI w. ... (The Gospel from the Beginning of the 16th Century ..., 1947). A set of Janów’s field notes were edited by Janusz Rieger and compiled into A Lexical Atlas of the Hutsul Dialects of the Ukrainian Language (1996). Rieger also edited and prepared for publication Janów’s dictionary of the Hutsul dialect Słownik Huculsky (Hutsul Dictionary, 2001).

[This article was updated in 2001.]