Árpád Berta was born on 28th of July 1951 in Hódmezővásárhely. The starting point of his education connected him to German–Russian specialization at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Szeged. He imagined a career as a scientist, and he wanted to be a Slavist. In 1974, however, his interest was more and more captivated by the newly founded Department of Altaic Studies. Although in 1975 he took his state exam as a teacher of German and Russian and has taught for five years at the Bethlen Gábor Grammar School in his hometown, Hódmezővásárhely, he continued his university studies in the field of Altaistics. In 1978 he improved his Tatar language skills at the State University of Kazan. He obtained his second degree in 1979, this time in Altaic Studies.
After graduating from the university András Róna-Tas, head of the Department of Altaic Studies, appointed him as an assistant professor at the department. In 1982, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the description of the dialect of the baptized Volga Tatars. The following year he won a prestigious scholarship from the German DAAD and studied, researched and taught in Göttingen for a year. After he returned, he became an adjunct professor. In 1986 he defended his dissertation, which dealt with the history of the Tatar dialects. In 1989 he was appointed as associate professor.
In 1991, he taught as a visiting professor at the Oriental Institute of the Johannes Gutenberg University on a Humboldt Scholarship. In 1991–1992 he became a professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Although he was invited to several other German universities, Árpád Berta returned to the University of Szeged in 1992 and took over the leadership of the Department of Altaic Studies. He habilitated at the university in 1995, and in 1996 he defended his academic doctoral dissertation. This dissertation was published in 1996 in German at the most prestigious scientific publishing house in Wiesbaden.
He became a university professor in 1996. In 1997 he received the Széchenyi Professorial Scholarship.
In 1999 he became the dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Szeged. In 2002, he took over the leadership of the Joint Research Group on Hungarian Prehistory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the University of Szeged, and from 2003 he led the Turkological Research Group of the University of Szeged and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Under his leadership, the new educational program in Altaic studies was elaborated.
In 2005, he was invited as a visiting researcher by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (SCASSS), based in Uppsala, where he worked for one year.
Árpád Berta devoted most of his research work to the history of the Turkic historical linguistics. He considered it important to include not only the literary, standard form of a Turkic language, but also its living spoken varieties and dialects. That is why beside of processing the on-site Tatar collection of Gábor Bálint he carried out fieldwork and research in the Tatar Republic.
His monograph published in 1983 was devoted to the study of Russian loanwords in Tatar (Tatarische etymologische Studien I. Die russischen Lehnwörter in der Mundart der getauften Tataren). His work, Wolgatatarische Dialektstudien, Textkritische Ausgabe der Originalsammlung von G. Bálint (1875–1876) that appeared in 1988, made available the material of a completely neglected Tatar dialect for the international scientific community. The most outstanding work of his first research period was published in 1989 and concerned the phonetics of Tatar dialects (Lautgeschichte der tatarischen Dialekte).
Already at this point it was clear to him that this research should be broadened in two directions. On the one hand, in addition to historical phonology, historical morphology must also be processed, and on the other hand, the data of the linguistic monuments of the Turkic languages must also be utilized. The first major result of this direction of research was his monograph on word formation in the Middle-Kipchak (Deverbale Wortbildung im Mittelkiptschakisch-Türkischen, 1996).
His research on Kipchak-Turkic had a great international resonance. Based on that, he was asked to write three chapters (Middle Kipchak, 158–165; Tatar and Bashkir, 231–300; West Kipchak Languages, 301–317) in the summarizing work of our era (eds. Lars Johanson – Éva Ágnes Csató, The Turkic Languages, London – New-York, 1998).
While he worked in a field of historical linguistics which previously was practically unknown in Hungary, it was also important for him to study the traditional field of Hungarian Turkology, the relations between the Hungarian and Turkic languages and people. After publishing the Volga-Tatar material collected by Gábor Bálint, he also edited the manuscript of Margit Palló’s monograph on the Hungarian verbs of Old Turkic origin (Régi török eredetű igéink. Szeged, 1982). Then he took on an even more difficult task. In 1930, Gyula Németh published his famous book, “A honfoglaló magyarság kialakulása” [The Formation of the Conquering Hungarians]. Gyula Németh then worked on the second edition of his book for 45 years. He completely rewrote many of the chapters, reworked some of them several times, corrected data, inserted new parts, deleted others, and then lifted them back. In his will, Gyula Németh entrusted his scientific legacy to András Róna-Tas. The manuscripts were sent to Szeged. After the death of Gyula Németh, the board of trustees asked Árpád Berta to arrange the manuscripts for publication. Soon it became clear that there was no ready-to-print manuscript in the material of the bequest, so Berta undertook to prepare a manuscript for printing in line with Gyula Németh’s scientific intention. The result was an exemplary careful and usable work, which was published in 1991 (Németh Gyula, A honfoglaló magyarság kialakulása. Második, bővített és átdolgozott kiadás. Közzéteszi Berta Árpád, Budapest [Gyula Németh, The Formation of the Conquering Hungarians. Second, expanded and revised edition. Published by Berta Árpád, Budapest].
One of his favorite field of research was the examination of Turkic tribal names. He thought that besides of the profound knowledge in Turkic historical linguistics and history of the Turkic lexicon, the system beyond the tribal and clan names is important as well. In this respect he followed the ideas of Gyula Németh and László Rásonyi, but he made important steps forward. He payed special attention to the formations of Turkic military organization. The first publication of him on this topic appeared in 1988, which was followed by several others in Hungarian and international scientific journals. Thanks to these works, he was asked to write the relevant articles in “Korai magyar történeti lexikon” (1994) edited by Gyula Kristó. His findings were summarized in Turkish language monograph: Türkçe kökenli Macar kavim adları. Ankara, 2002.
In spite that it was written in Hungarian, his critical edition of the Old Turkic runiform inscriptions (Szavaimat jól halljátok… A türk és ujgur rovásírásos emlékek kritikai kiadása. Szeged, 2004) gained serious international recognition. The Turkish version of this work was published in 2010 in Ankara (Sözlerimi iyi dinleyin… Türk ve Uygur runik yazıtlarının karşılaştırmalı yayını).
From the nineties Berta’s scope of interest broadened further. Besides of Turkic historical phonetics and morphology he worked on Turkic etymology as well. This was connected to the workings carried out together with András Róna-Tas on the Turkic loanwords of Hungarian. His etymologies were published after the other in the journals and volumes of Turkology and Hungarian linguistics.
He worked on the Turkic loanwords of the Hungarian language until the last days of his life. A preliminary presentation of the forthcoming volume was published in 2002 (Old Turkic Loanwords in Hungarian: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 2002: 43–67). Struggling with his increasingly prevalent illness, he finished with about half of the 500 etymological articles.
As a scientist and researcher, he considered education and the education of young scientists to be especially important. He was a student of many doctoral students, the work of whom he supervised with an understanding, helpful rigor.
