Ilona Koutny: A Beacon in Esperanto Studies

Photo by Katalin Kováts, in Aalen (Germany) in 2018, when Ilona Koutny received the FAME award.

On the occasion of the conclusion of the postgraduate Interlinguistic Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University (UAM) in Poznań, Poland, ESF congratulates and thanks Professor Ilona Koutny for her many years of valuable academic work in various fields and branches of Esperanto studies and interlinguistics.

The Interlinguistic Studies (IS) were founded by Professor Koutny in 1997.

During its 26 years of operation, eight three-year student cohorts were launched, enrolling almost 200 participants from 36 countries.  55 Esperanto speakers from 20 countries received diplomas after completing their three-year study program. Many graduates now work in universities, hold significant positions in various organizations or associations, and contribute to Esperanto worldwide.

Thanks to Professor Koutny’s excellent organizational efforts, about twenty renowned Esperanto experts in linguistics, the history of the movement, literature, grammar, phonetics, sociology, journalism, and teaching methodology, accepted her invitation and collaborated in the study programs. They shared their knowledge with an international student body, mostly in person, but during and after the pandemic period also online and in hybrid formats. The program provided opportunities for high-level exchanges of expertise and multilayered international meetings. Participants and their instructors have often continued their activities in various projects and pro-Esperanto endeavors. This offers hope that Esperanto studies and interlinguistics will continue to thrive in the academic and scientific world thanks to Poznań’s graduates.

Scenes from the activities of IS can be seen in the blog on the university page.

Professor Koutny’s primary work at UAM was related to teaching Hungarian language and linguistics. From 2010 until her retirement, she was the chair of Finno-Ugric studies, and between 2020-2024 she was the chair of Hungarian Studies.

Since 2009, along with colleague Michael Farris, Professor Koutny has led an English-language course on International Communication – International Languages for students of the Linguistics Institute (renamed the Faculty of Ethnolinguistics in 2023) with participation from several international students.

In 2022, Ilona Koutny successfully launched a master’s program in interlinguistics combined with English and information management, where 9 Chinese students completed their studies.

The prestige of Esperanto studies was also elevated by the five interlinguistic symposia held in Poznań (every three years between 2008 and 2020), organized by Ilona Koutny. Materials from the latest symposium were published in two volumes in the university series Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Studies, edited by Ilona Koutny.

Professor Koutny’s final major achievement, marking the pinnacle of her career, was organizing the Interlinguistic Working Section at the prestigious International Congress of Linguists in September 2024 in Poznań, with participation from professors and students of the final IS group.

Her distinguished contributions extended beyond university teaching in Poland. She lectured in Esperanto, English, French, German, and Polish at scientific conferences, collaborated in several international projects, and led courses and lecture series in dozens of countries, including the United States.

Her other notable Esperanto activities include her valuable work as a lexicographer. She co-edited the Hungarian-Esperanto Dictionary (1996 with I. Szerdahelyi, which has approximately 65,000 entries and significant specialized content) and the Hungarian-Polish Thematic Dictionary (2000 with colleagues, with approximately 26,000 entries). Her multilingual thematic glossaries are continuously being published, and a digital version is also in preparation. She has also edited several academic books, conference proceedings, and scientific linguistic journals.

Professor Koutny was also interested in computational linguistics, beginning her career in Budapest, Hungary, where she graduated in mathematics, French philology, and Esperanto studies at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in 1977. She initially worked in computational research institutes, co-developing the Esperanto speech synthesis system ESPAROL as part of a multilingual synthesis system and collaborating on the Distributed Language Translation (DLT) machine translation project, preparing the Hungarian module with Hungarian colleagues. The analysis of speech synthesis applications was also the topic of her doctoral dissertation. She was awarded a post-doctoral degree in linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 2009. (see the English language book with the topic: Natural Language Processing for Hungarian Speech Synthesis)

In Budapest, she was a disciple of István Szerdahelyi, whose tasks she took over in the Esperanto Studies faculty after his passing in 1987. Later, after marrying Polish Esperantist Zbigniew Galor, she moved to Poland in 1997, where she created the opportunity to continue her work in the footsteps and vision of her mentor Szerdahelyi.

Although Ilona Koutny has retired, and the Interlinguistic Studies at UAM in Poznań can no longer continue, she continues to teach some courses and plans to publish additional books summarizing her work and documenting the fruits of her decades-long experience. These future publications could serve as teaching materials for a third generation of Interlinguistic Studies in another country or part of the world, to whose future colleagues Ilona Koutny hopes to pass the torch.

ESF expresses its deep respect and admiration, thanking Ilona Koutny for her significant contribution to the scientific and linguistic recognition and dissemination of Esperanto, and wishes her much energy and enthusiasm to fulfill her plans and enjoy the “carefree life” of retirement in good health.

A detailed biography of Ilona Koutny can be found in the Pantheon of Edukado.net, where she has been featured for more than a decade, and where there is space to leave messages and congratulations.