Today is the 100th anniversary of the prominent Bashkir linguist and ethnographer Jalil Kiekbaev

Today, October 25, is the 100th anniversary fr om the birth date of the prominent Bashkir ethnographer, specialist in Turk languages, poet Jalil Kiekbaev.

Jalil Kiekbaev was born in the village Karan-Elga, Bashkortostan. He had finished the Ufa Pedagogical College with the specialty “Bashkir language and literature”, later he went to the Moscow Pedagogical Institute of foreign languages, wh ere he studied German philology.

Jalil Kiekbaev worked at secondary schools as a teacher of German, English and Russian languages. Since 1948 he worked at the Bashkir Pedagogical Institute as a docent, Professor and was the dean of the chair of Bashkir language.

In 1960 he has become the first Bashkir doctor of philology. He has written more than 50 scientific works. He has touched upon the most actual problems in Bashkir linguistics already in his first work and offered the series of measures for further development and enrichment of Bashkir literary language.

Professor Kiekbaev possessed deep knowledge in German philology, Turk and Slavic languages, practically mastering more than 20 languages. He was the expert in Bashkir dialects, writing numerous monographs for phonetics, vocabulary and morphology of Bashkir language. He was busy with the problems of historical grammar in Turk languages.

He has printed his first poems still in the 30s of the last century, translated Goethe, Heine and Grimm Brothers into Bashkir language and wrote fairy tales for kids. His novel “Folks and Friends” brought him wide popularity.

The Professor died on March 19, 1968.