Vuk Stefanović Karadžić

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Vuk Stefanović Karadžić

Born November 7, 1787 (1787-11-07)
Tršić, Serbia, Ottoman Empire
Died February 7, 1864 (aged 76)
Vienna, Austrian Empire, Holy Roman Empire
Occupation Linguist

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (Serbian Cyrillic: Вук Стефановић Караџић) (November 7, 1787 - February 7, 1864) was a Serbian linguist and major reformer of the Serbian language. He was an honorary citizen of the Croatian capital, Zagreb.

Karadžić was born in the village of Tršić, near Loznica in Serbia, then part of the Ottoman Empire. As one of the leading European philologist of his time, Karadžić reformed the Serb literary language and standardized the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by following strict phonemic principles on the German model.

Karadžić's reforms of the Serbian literary language modernized it and distanced it from Serbian and Russian Church Slavonic, instead bringing it close to common folk speech, specifically, to the dialect of Eastern Herzegovina which he spoke. Karadžić was, together with Đuro Daničić, the main Serbian signatory to the Vienna Agreement of 1850 which, encouraged by Austrian authorities, laid the foundation for the Serbian language, various forms of which are used in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia today. Karadžic translated the New Testament into Serbian, which was published in 1868.

In addition to these linguistic reforms, Vuk also made great contributions to folk literature, using peasant culture as the foundation. Because of his peasant upbringing, he closely associated with the peasant's oral literature, compiling it to use in his collection of folk songs, tales, and proverbs. While Vuk hardly considered peasant life romantic, he highly regarded it as an integral part of Serbian culture. He collected several volumes of folk prose and poetry, including a book of over 100 lyrical and epic songs learned as a child and written down from memory. He also published the first dictionary of vernacular Serbian. For his work he received little financial aid, at times living in poverty. He died in Vienna.

Vuk Karadžić´s house today in all-museum village Tršić
Vuk Karadžić´s house today in all-museum village Tršić

Contents

[edit] Major works

[edit] Quotes

Write as you speak and read as it is written. (The essence of modern Serbian spelling)

In Serbian: Пиши као што говориш и читај како је написано (Piši kao što govoriš i čitaj kako je napisano)

Although the above quotation is usually attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, it is in fact an orthographic principle devised by the German grammarian and philologist Johann Christoph Adelung. Karadžić merely used that principle to push through his language reform (as stated in the book "The Grammar of the Serbian Language" by Professor Ljubomir Popović).

The attribution of the quote to Karadžić is a common misconception in Serbia. Due to that fact, the entrance exam to the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade (Serbia) occasionally contains a question on the authorship of the quote (as a sort of trick question).

[edit] Further reading

  • Wilson, Duncan. The Life and Times of Vuk Stefanović Karadzić, 1787-1864; Literacy, Literature and National Independence in Serbia. Oxford [Eng.]: Clarendon Press, 1970.

[edit] External links