Vuk Karadžić, J. B. Rottmayer, Wien, between 1859 and 1864, PDM
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864) was a reformer of the Serbian language and orthography. After the dominance of the Slavonic-Serbian language, Vuk fought for the use of vernacular Serbian as the literary language, thereby reforming its grammar and orthography. The beginning of Karadžić’s language reform coincided with the year he relocated to Vienna, following the failure of the First Serbian Uprising (1813), where he became acquainted with Jernej Kopitar, a Slovenian philologist. According to Kopitar’s advice, Karadžić initially wrote a Serbian grammar book (Писменица сербскога језика по говору простога народа написана, 1814), after which he committed to the relentless compilation of material for the first Serbian Dictionary (Српски рјечник, 1818, 1852), and he devoted special attention to the creation of the first Serbian primer, published in 1827. Although Karadžić’s endeavours were met with approval throughout Europe, he encountered fierce opposition in Serbia, particularly amongst representatives of the church and state authorities. Therefore, 1847 - the year of his triumph represented a significant step forward for the written culture. Building on the work of previous reformers, such as Savo Mrkalj, the first promoter of the principle „write as you speak“, Karadžić managed to carry out this idea by reducing the former alphabet from over 40 to 30 letters. Parallel to the work on the grammar and orthography reform, Karadžić managed to compile the Serbian Dictionary, with Kopitar’s help. The first edition of the dictionary was published in 1818 and it contained 27,270 words, whereas the second edition, published in 1852, contained 47,500 lexical items. The dictionary was trilingual, with explanations in Serbian, German and Latin. Due to the lack of educational means, Karadžić also created the first Serbian Primer, which contained examples of how to read Serbian Church Slavonic words and abbreviations, an explanation of Roman numerals, a multiplication table and examples of analysed religious texts, in addition to the revised Cyrillic alphabet (azbuka).
Serbian Grammar Book (Писменица сербскога језика по говору простога народа написана), 1814
Karadžić began his work on the language reform by creating a grammar book, which contained new Serbian grammar and orthography rules. With this book, he aimed to justify the need for the reform he strived to enforce with Kopitar’s help and to provide a textbook which would be the basis for learning Serbian. Thus, the first grammar book - Писменица сербскога језика по говору простога народа написана was printed in Vienna, in 1814 (The literal translation of the title is The Serbian Language Grammar Written in the Vernacular Language). The grammar book contained 106 pages, a dedication to a priest Milentije Nikšić (which is quite unusual, since the church was the fiercest opposer of the language and orthography reform), a preface and a list of subscribers. In the preface, Karadžić modestly stated that he had created the grammar to the best of his ability. He added that, while he was studying the language, he didn’t have any grammar book to consult, which is how he realised that such book was necessary. Karadžić adhered to Adelung’s orthographic principle “write as you speak” that he considered achievable in Serbian. He divided the grammar book into 3 parts, which, in modern terms, would coincide with orthography and phonetics (1st part), morphology (2nd part) and syntax (3rd part). At the beginning of the 19th century, Serbian was based on a non-standardised alphabet (azbuka) which contained over 40 letters and the language itself was a mixture of the Church Slavonic, Slavonic-Serbian and vernacular language. Writers in 19th century Serbia often created their own rules and Karadžić believed such practices had to be ended. After listing 44 letters most commonly encountered in Slavic books, Karadžić presented the new azbuka, which contained 29 letters. In Karadžić’s opinion, none of the letters was superfluous or missing, so there were exactly as many as needed (he later added one extra letter, so the final version of azbuka had the total of 30 letters). This was the first and vital step Karadžić had taken in his efforts to standardize the Serbian language.
The next step Karadžić took was publishing the Serbian dictionary. With Jernej Kopitar’s help, Karadžić collected the dictionary material between 1813 and 1818 and he printed the Serbian Dictionary (Српски рјечник) in 1818, also in Vienna. Karadžić claimed that the reason the state of the Serbian language was chaotic was twofold (he referred to it as misfortune and shame). Firstly, we didn’t have a primer, nor a grammar book based on which the children could acquire knowledge. Since all Serbian scholars were educated abroad, they used foreign grammar books of the languages they were familiar with. Secondly, Serbs had two languages at the time. The first one was the language of the church books and the second one was the vernacular language, which the reform opposers referred to as the language of the swine and cattle herders. Karadžić’s opposers claimed that the vernacular language did not have a sufficiently developed vocabulary and, thus, couldn’t convey all the necessary information. Karadžić worked tirelessly on collecting the dictionary material, so as to prove that the vernacular language had an adequate vocabulary. Even if certain words were not included, he laid the foundation for their addition. In Karadžić’s opinion, an explanation of a word in the dictionary should contain everything the people refer to when using that particular word and, as a result, the dictionary contained folk customs and narratives. With Jernej Kopitar’s help, the dictionary entries were translated into Latin and German. The lexical items Karadžić included in the dictionary originated from various timeframes and language layers - Slavic, Byzantine and Turkish. The first edition contained as many as 27,270 lexical items and it also included the Serbian Grammar.
Serbian Dictionary (Српски рјечник), 1852
Serbian Dictionary: Interpreted using German and Latin Words (Српски рјечник: истумачен њемачкијем и латинскијем ријечима), published in Vienna (1852) by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, was the second revised edition of the dictionary previously published in 1818. Đuro Daničić, a philologist, contributed to this monumental lexicographical undertaking. The dictionary contained 47,427 accented words. Having in mind the concept of the dictionary, Karadžić analysed the cultural, social, political and everyday life of Serbian people of the time, including lexemes from all areas of social and cultural life and then he provided explanations in two languages. The dictionary encompassed various literary genres, including riddles, proverbs, folk tales and narratives, in order to illustrate the meaning of certain words. Therefore, it is rightfully considered an ethnographic and lexicographic treasury of the national material and spiritual culture. Numerous folk tales, customs and narratives would later become part of Karadžić’s other works, that he announced at the end of the book, after the list of subscribers, in the form of a teaser or ad in modern terms. Entries related to social and administrative infrastructure and education of the time (see: Škola, Srez, Čitluk, Knez, Kmet, etc.) are particularly significant, as well as the discussion of the language and orthography, spread across entries about education and literacy.
The First Serbian Primer (Први српски буквар), written by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, was published in Vienna, in 1827, using the reformed Karadžić’s Cyrillic script. It signified the birth of an idea of a systematic rise of literacy among the Serbian people of the time. In a valuable preface to the Serbian primer , Vuk said that his intention was to “facilitate the adoption of writing amongst people“, which is why “the letters are arranged in order, the way they are the easiest to pronounce“. Karadžić’s primer represents the beginning of modernisation of education, i.e. the separation of contemporary education from church education, which was based on church service books and psalters. In the 14th paragraph, Vuk exposed the essence of his language reform, comparing “Slavic and Cyril’s letters” with his phonetic solutions for diphthongs. He also resolved abbreviations from Church Slavonic and compared numbers written in letters to their Arabic and Latin equivalents, adding their meaning at the end in contemporary language and reformed Cyrillic script. He did the same with the multiplication table since he wanted to illustrate multiple operabilities of the written word.
