Franc Serafin Metelko

Franc Serafin Metelko, also known as Fran Metelko (14 July 1789 – 27 December 1860) was a

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 century.

Metelko was born in the village of Škocjan in Lower Carniola, then part of the Habsburg monarchy. He studied theology and philosophy in Ljubljana. In 1814 he was ordained a priest and in 1817 he started teaching Slovene at the Lyceum in Ljubljana.

In 1825, he published a book in German titled Lehrgebäude der slowenischen Sprache im Königreiche Illyrien und in den benachbarten Provinzen (Slovenian Textbook for the

Cyrillic. In addition, Metelko based his phonology on his local Lower Carniolan dialect

, which was not acceptable for most contemporary Slovenian authors.

Metelko's proposal further aggravated the "

Czech scholar František Čelakovský to publish a devastating critique of Metelko's alphabet, which undermined the chances of its success. Čop also persuaded the local Austrian educational authorities to ban Metelko's alphabet from schools, which they did with an official decree in 1833. The Alphabet War nevertheless continued until the 1840s, when a slightly modified version of Gaj's Latin alphabet

was finally adopted, which is still used to this day.

Metelko's alphabet remained in public memory because of a satirical poem by France Prešeren titled "Al' prav se piše kaa ali kaſha" (How to Write the Word Porridge), which criticized the Alphabet War as nonsense.