Bratoljub Klaić is a Croatian

Croats

Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...

 linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

.

Biography

He was born in the municipality of Bizovac

Bizovac

Bizovac is a municipality in Osijek-Baranja County, Croatia. There are 4,979 inhabitants, 97.5% of which are Croats.-Geography:The settlements around in Bizovac include:*Brođanci*Cerovac*Cret Bizovački*Habjanovci*Novaki Bizovački...

 near Valpovo

Valpovo

Valpovo is a town in Slavonia, Croatia. It is close to the Drava river in the region of Slavonia, northwest of Osijek. The population of Valpovo is 7,396, with a total of 11,570 in the municipality.-Demographics:...

. After finishing classical

Classical philology

Classical philology is the study of ancient Greek and classical Latin. Classical philology has been defined as "the careful study of the literary and philosophical texts of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds." Greek and Latin literature and civilization have traditionally been considered...

 gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 in Zagreb

Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

, and graduating at the Faculty of Philosophy the history of South Slavic languages

South Slavic languages

The South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...

 and literatures, Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

 and German, he pursues further specialisation in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 and Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. He received his Ph.D. in 1941 with the thesis Bizovačko narječje ('The dialect of Bizovac'). He was a professor at the gymnasium in Vukovar

Vukovar

Vukovar is a city in eastern Croatia, and the biggest river port in Croatia located at the confluence of the Vuka river and the Danube. Vukovar is the center of the Vukovar-Syrmia County...

, Prijedor

Prijedor

Prijedor is a city and municipality in the north-western part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is situated in the Bosanska Krajina region....

, Osijek

Osijek

Osijek is the fourth largest city in Croatia with a population of 83,496 in 2011. It is the largest city and the economic and cultural centre of the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia, as well as the administrative centre of Osijek-Baranja county...

 and Zagreb, and at the Viša pedagoška škola in Zagreb. From 1950. he is a professor of Croatian language

Croatian language

Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

 at the Academy for Theater and Film Arts.

As a member of the State Committee for Language in NDH

NDH

The letters NDH can mean:* The Independent State of Croatia * New German Hardness, or Neue Deutsche Härte * National Dairy Holdings L.P.* In ads for used vehicles, particularly aircraft: No damage history...

, Klaić has, in collaboration with other members, arranged an orthographical handbook Koriensko pisanje ('Root-based writing'; 1942), and with Franjo Cipra also a voluminous Hrvatski pravopis ('Croatian orthography'; 1944, reprint in 1992), both based on the morphological-etymological principles in accordance with the official language policy.

He became famous for his Rječnik stranih riječi ('The dictionary of foreign words'), which was printed in several editions in the period 1951-2001. He translated from foreign languages (Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

, Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

, Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

, Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 etc.). As a versed accentologist, he published papers on Croatian prosody, leaving an orthoepical

Orthoepy

Orthoepy means the doctrine of correct pronunciation within a specific oral tradition. The term is from the Greek ὀρθοέπεια, from ὀρθός orthos "correct" and ἔπος epos "speech." The antonym is cacoepy "bad or wrong pronunciation"...

 dictionary in MS. He commented and provided critical editions of various Croatian writers (e.g. in the edition Pet stoljeća hrvatske književnosti, 'The five centuries of Croatian literature') and linguistically adapted many theater and film performances. He practised diction

Diction

Diction , in its original, primary meaning, refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story...

 with actors for the shows and was a main interpreter for unknown words. He studied Polish-Croatian cultural ties and wrote on them. Beside linguistics, he also studied literary theory

Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...

 (Između jezikoslovlja i nauke o književnosti, 'Between linguistics and the literary theory'; 1972).

In Croatian studies

Croatian studies

Croatian studies is an academic discipline within Slavic studies which is concerned with the study of Croatian language, literature, history and culture...

 as well as in Croatian culture in general, Bratoljub Klaić left a permanent written and oral mark as a versed lexicographer

Lexicography

Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....

 and orthographical

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

normativist.