Jernej Bartol Kopitar (21 August 1780 – 11 August 1844) was a Slovene
linguistLinguistics 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 philologist working in
ViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. He also worked as the Imperial censor for Slovene literature in Vienna. He is perhaps best known for his role in the Serbian language reform started by
Vuk Stefanović KaradžićVuk Stefanović Karadžić was a Serbian philolog and linguist, the major reformer of the Serbian language, and deserves, perhaps, for his collections of songs, fairy tales, and riddles to be called the father of the study of Serbian folklore. He was the author of the first Serbian dictionary...
, where he played a vital role in supporting the reform by using his reputation and influence as a
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
philologist.
Early life
Kopitar was born in the small
CarniolaCarniola was a historical region that comprised parts of what is now Slovenia. As part of Austria-Hungary, the region was a crown land officially known as the Duchy of Carniola until 1918. In 1849, the region was subdivided into Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, and Inner Carniola...
n village of
RepnjeRepnje is a village in the municipality of Vodice in the Upper Carniola region of Slovenia.In the centre of the village is Repnje Castle, built in the late 19th century and now housing a Franciscan convent with an adjacent church. The main church of the settlement is built on a hill above the village...
near
VodiceVodice is a settlement and municipality in the Upper Carniola region of Slovenia, just north of Ljubljana.The Parish Church in the settlement is dedicated to Saint Margaret and is first mentioned in documents dating to 1118. It used to have a defensive wall around it to protect the population from...
, in what was then the
Habsburg MonarchyThe Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
and is now in
SloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. After graduating from the
lyceumA 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
LjubljanaLjubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
, he became a private teacher in the house of baron Sigmund Zois, a renowned entrepreneur, scientist and patron of arts. Kopitar later became Zois' personal secretary and librarian. During this period, he became acquainted with the circle of
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
intellectuals that gathered in
Zois' mansionZois Palace is a mansion in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.The mansion was built between 1765 and 1770, combining older buildings, in the neoclassicist style. It is located on the bank of the Ljubljanica river...
, such as the playwright and historian
Anton Tomaž LinhartAnton Tomaž Linhart was a Slovene playwright and historian, best known as the author of the first comedy in Slovene, Županova Micka...
, the poet and editor
Valentin VodnikValentin Vodnik was a Slovene priest, journalist and poet from the late Enlightenment period.-Life and work:He was born in Šiška, now a suburb of Ljubljana, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy...
, and philologist
Jurij JapeljJurij Japelj, also known in German as Georg Japel was a Slovene Jesuit priest, translator and philologist. He was part of the Zois circle, a group of Carniolan scholars and intellectuals that were instrumental in the spread of Enlightenment ideas in the Slovene Lands...
.
Career as a censor and linguist
In 1808, he moved to Vienna, where he studied law. At the same time, he developed an interest in the comparative analysis of the
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, to which he would devote all his later life. He became employed as a librarian and later an administrator at the
Vienna Court LibraryThe Austrian National Library , is the largest library in Austria, with 7.4 million items in its collections. It is located in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna; since 2005 some of the collections are located in the baroque Palais Mollard-Clary...
. He later become the chief
censorthumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
for books written in Slavic languages and
Modern GreekModern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
.
Among European linguists, he was considered a valued scientist and thinker. In 1808, he published the first
SlovenianSlovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...
grammar, called
Grammatik der Slavischen Sprache in Krain, Karnten und Steyemark ("Grammar of the Slavic language in
CarniolaCarniola was a historical region that comprised parts of what is now Slovenia. As part of Austria-Hungary, the region was a crown land officially known as the Duchy of Carniola until 1918. In 1849, the region was subdivided into Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, and Inner Carniola...
, Carinthia, and Styria"). In his work
Glagolita Clozianus (1836), he published the first critically revised, translated, and annotated version of the
Freising ManuscriptsThe Freising Manuscripts are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic language and the oldest document in Slovene.The monuments consisting of three texts in the oldest Slovene dialect were discovered bound into a Latin codex...
, the oldest known work in Slovene and the first work in any Slavic language written in the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
. In the same work, he advanced the Pannonian Theory of the development of Common Slavic - a theory that is now in vogue again through modern
paleolinguisticsPaleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics...
studies and archeology.
Under the influence of the efforts of a group of contemporary Carinthian Slovene philologists, especially
Urban JarnikUrban Jarnik was a Carinthian Slovene priest, historian, poet, author and ethnographer.He was born in the lower Gailtal in the Duchy of Carinthia. He served as a parish priest in several villages and towns throughout southern Carinthia, including Klagenfurt and Moosburg, which at the time still...
and
Matija AhacelMatija Ahacel, also known in German as Matthias Achazel , born Matija Kobentar, was a Carinthian Slovene philologist, publicist, and collector of folk songs....
, Kopitar sought to educate a new generation of linguists who would develop grammars and textbooks, advocate orthographic reform, and collect folk literature. Due to these efforts, he was given a chair in Slovene at the Ljubljana Lyceum in 1817.
Language reforms
In the 1820s and 1830s, Kopitar became involved in the so-called "Slovene Alphabet War" (Slovene:
Abecedna vojna, or
Črkarska pravda), a debate over orthographic reform. He supported radical reforms of the old
bohoričica orthography, advanced first by
Peter DajnkoPeter Dajnko was a Slovene priest, author, and linguist, known primarily as the inventor of an innovative proposal for the writing system for Slovene: the Dajnko alphabet ....
and then by
Franc Serafin MetelkoFranc Serafin Metelko, also known as Fran Metelko was a Slovene Roman Catholic priest, author, and philologist, best known for his proposal of a new script for the Slovene called the Metelko alphabet, which was meant to replace the traditional Bohorič alphabet, used since the late sixteenth...
. Kopitar's main opponent in the conflict was the philologist
Matija ČopMatija Čop , also known in German as Matthias Tschop, was a Slovene linguist, literary historian and critic.- Biography :...
. Čop convinced the renowned
CzechCzechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...
scholar
František ČelakovskýFrantišek Ladislav Čelakovský, also known by the pseudonym Marcian Hromotluk, was a Czech writer and translator.-Life:...
to publish a devastating critique on the proposed alphabet reforms, which undermined Kopitar's authority. The issue was resolved with the compromise adoption of Gaj's Latin alphabet. Čop and Kopitar also disagreed on the issue of whether the Slovenes should develop their own national culture. Kopitar favored gradual evolution towards a common literary language for all South Slavic peoples, with Slovene dialects remaining the colloquial language of the peansantry. Čop, on the other hand, insisted on the creation of a
high cultureHigh culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
in Slovene that would follow contemporary literary trends. One of the main supporters of Čop's project, the poet
France PrešerenFrance Prešeren was a Slovene Romantic poet. He is considered the Slovene national poet. Although he was not a particularly prolific author, he inspired virtually all Slovene literature thereafter....
, sharply criticized Kopitar's views, which led to frequent confrontations between the two.
Politically, Kopitar was a supporter of
AustroslavismAustroslavism was a political concept and program aimed to solve problems of Slavic peoples in the Austrian Empire.It was most influential among Czech liberals around the middle of the 19th century...
, a doctrine aimed at the unity of
Slavic peoplesThe Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
within the
Austrian EmpireThe Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
. He was also a staunch conservative, and supporter of the Metternich regime, with a paternalistic approach to the peasant culture. On the other side, Čop and Prešeren emphasized on the cultivation of the Slovene language as the means for the emergence of a lay Slovene intelligentsia that would foster and develop a specific Slovene identity within the framework of Slavic solidarity. After the "Alphabet War" in the 1830s, Kopitar's political and cultural influence in his native
Slovene LandsSlovene Lands or Slovenian Lands is the historical denomination for the whole of the Slovene-inhabited territories in Central Europe. It more or less corresponds to modern Slovenia and the adjacent territories in Italy, Austria and Hungary in which autochthonous Slovene minorities live.-...
diminished significantly. At the same time, however, he gained influence among other South Slavic
intelligentsiaThe intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
, especially the
SerbianThe Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
one. He influenced
Vuk Stefanović KaradžićVuk Stefanović Karadžić was a Serbian philolog and linguist, the major reformer of the Serbian language, and deserves, perhaps, for his collections of songs, fairy tales, and riddles to be called the father of the study of Serbian folklore. He was the author of the first Serbian dictionary...
in forming a new standard for the
SerbianSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
literary language based on common use.
Death and heritage
Kopitar died in Vienna on August 11, 1844, reportedly with Karadžić standing at his deathbed. His tombstone is displayed in the
NavjeNavje, formerly known as St. Christopher's Cemetery is a memorial park in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. It is located in the Bežigrad district, just behind the Ljubljana railway station....
Cemetery in
LjubljanaLjubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
, at the edge of the former St. Christopher's Cemetery. A neighbourhood in
BelgradeBelgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, the capital of
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, called
Kopitareva GradinaKopitareva Gradina is a square and an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Stari Grad.- Location :...
, is named after him.
External links