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Hans Kurath (13 December 1891 – 2 January 1992) was an American linguistics of Austrian origin. He was full professor for English and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The many varieties of regional English language that he encountered during his trips convinced him of the necessity of completing a systematic study of American English.
In 1926, he convinced the Modern Language Association to begin planning for the project, and in 1931, a pilot study of the New England region was initiated under his direction, eventually producing the Linguistic Atlas of New England. It soon became clear, however, that the undertaking was too complex to be completed by a single team of linguists. The project was thus expanded to eight additional regional operations.
Kurath guided the vision and goals of the regional projects for three decades and oversaw the publication of a series of volumes that are known collectively as the Linguistic Atlas of the United States, the first linguistic atlas of the US. For that work, he received the Loubat Prize.
He was also the first main editor of the Middle English Dictionary. Additionally, together with Raven I. McDavid, Jr., he published a linguistic atlas of the Eastern United States, The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States.
In 1946, he became Full Professor for English and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1946–1962). In 1941, he was president of the Linguistic Society of America. In 1959, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago.
He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the age of 100. His wife was the dance ethnologist Gertrude Prokosch Kurath, daughter of Eduard Prokosch, a historical linguist.
Each regional operation used similar techniques: a small team of linguists fanned out across the region interviewing at least two people in every county. Kurath gave the researchers explicit instructions about the types of informants who were considered appropriate for the project. In every town or city selected for the project, at least two people would be chosen, one had to be "old-fashioned and unschooled," Kurath suggested a farmer or a farmer's wife, and the other should be "a member of the middle class who has had the benefit of a grade-school or high-school education" (Kurath 1949: v). The communities themselves were also carefully screened. Kurath placed a priority on towns that were early American settlements or could be directly linked to them through historical records.
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