Luchkai, Mykhailo

Luchkai, Mykhailo [Лучкай, Михайло; Lučkaj, Myxajlo; Lutskay; né Pop], b 19 November 1789 in Velyki Luchky, Transcarpathia, d 3 December 1843 in Uzhhorod. Historian, linguist, and Greek Catholic priest. After graduating from the Barbareum seminary in Vienna, he served as archivist and librarian of the Mukachevo eparchy and devoted himself to the history, ethnography, and language of Transcarpathia. He wrote Grammatica Slavo-Ruthena ... (1830), based on J. Dobrovský’s Czech grammar of 1822. It is one of the earliest descriptions of a Ukrainian dialect. It was studied by Mykhailo Vozniak (1890), Vasyl Simovych (1930–1), Georgii Gerovsky (1931), and V. Pogorelov (1939). The grammar was reprinted with an introduction by Oleksa Horbach in 1979. Luchkai argued that Church Slavonic was the oldest form of the Transcarpathian dialect and therefore it should be the literary language of Transcarpathia. Although his six-volume history of Transcarpathia was not published, it was circulated widely and influenced many later historians.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]