On Thursday, April 21, at the age of 91, linguist Jānis Kušķis passed away, and Ināra Randere, a representative of the Latvian association, told Facebook.
Kušķis was born on November 14, 1930 in Lazdona. In 1955 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the State University of Latvia, continued his postgraduate studies there from 1955 to 1958, and obtained a master’s degree in philology. From 1958 to 2009, Kušķis was a lecturer at the Department of Latvian (later Baltic) at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Latvia.
He has published about 1,200 articles on linguistic issues in various publications in Latvia and abroad. Kušķis has produced 900 programs on the language of Latvian Radio, and is a co-author of the book “How a Latvian Speaks” (1994). The linguist has also read reports on the language in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moscow, Toronto and New York.
Kušķis was the chairman of the Latvian Association, an honorary member of the Latvian-Australian Association (1998), an honorary member of the Theodor Reiter Foundation (1998), and worked in the Latvian Language Development Group of the Riga Latvian Association. Kušķis has received the Karl Milenbach Prize (1999), the Luda Bērziņš Grand Prize (2006), the Theodor Reiter Grand Prize (2004) and the Order of the Three Stars (2004).
The linguist’s articles are compiled in Our Language (2006) and Our Language II (2009). Kušķis used the classic spelling, calling himself the last endzelinist. He has written an article on how to use “pareizi ŗ” correctly.
The Latvian language, books and music were the most important in his life, according to the society. He has given his extensive collection of sounds to the National Library of Latvia. Randere also emphasizes that Kušķis loved Latvia unselfishly and was a patriot of Latvia.
Farewell to Kušķis will take place on Wednesday, April 27, in the Great Hall of the Riga Crematorium at 1 p.m.
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