Jernej Kopitar

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jernej Kopitar
Born(1780-08-21)21 August 1780
Repnje, Habsburg monarchy
Died11 August 1844(1844-08-11) (aged 63)
Vienna, Austrian Empire
NationalitySlovene
Scientific career
FieldsLinguistics
Slavic studies

Jernej Kopitar, also known as Bartholomeus Kopitar

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, where he played a vital role in supporting the reform by using his reputation and influence as a Slavic
philologist.

Early life

Kopitar was born in the small Carniolan village of Repnje near Vodice, in what was then the Habsburg monarchy and is now in Slovenia. After graduating from the lyceum in Ljubljana, 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 Enlightenment intellectuals that gathered in Zois' mansion, such as the playwright and historian Anton Tomaž Linhart, the poet and editor Valentin Vodnik, and philologist Jurij Japelj.

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 languages, to which he would devote all his later life. He became employed as a librarian and later an administrator at the Vienna Court Library. He later become the chief censor for books written in Slavic languages and Modern Greek.

Among European linguists, he was considered a valued scientist and thinker. Particularly important is his correspondence with the Bohemian philologist

Freising Manuscripts, the oldest known work in Slovene and the first work in any Slavic language written in the Latin alphabet. In the same work, he advanced the Pannonian Theory of the origin of Common Slavic, which is a theory that is no longer accepted by other scientists.[3]

Under the influence of the efforts of a group of contemporary

Carinthian Slovene philologists, especially Urban Jarnik and Matija Ahacel, 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[clarification needed] at the Ljubljana Lyceum
in 1817.

Language reforms

In the early 1830s, Kopitar became involved in the

South Slavic peoples, with Slovene dialects remaining the colloquial language of the peasantry. Čop, on the other hand, insisted on the creation of a high culture in Slovene that would follow contemporary literary trends. One of the main supporters of Čop's project, the poet France Prešeren
, sharply criticized Kopitar's views, which led to frequent confrontations between the two.

Politically, Kopitar was a supporter of

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in forming a new standard for the Serbian
literary language based on common use.

Death and heritage

Gravestone of Jernej Kopitar in Vienna, later moved to Navje Memorial Park in Ljubljana.
Gravestone of Jernej Kopitar in Navje Memorial Park in Ljubljana.

Kopitar died in Vienna on 11 August 1844, reportedly with Karadžić standing at his deathbed. He was buried in St. Marx Cemetery in Vienna, and the theologian Michal Josef Fessl had a gravestone for Kopitar erected there in October 1845.[4] Kopitar's remains and gravestone were moved to St. Christopher's Cemetery in Ljubljana in 1897.[4] In 1955, Kopitar's remains were transferred to Navje Memorial Park, where his gravestone is also now displayed, at the edge of the former St. Christopher's Cemetery.[5] A neighbourhood in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, called Kopitareva Gradina, is named after him.

Notes

  1. ^ Merše, Majda. "Jernej Kopitar. Grammatik der Slaviſchen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steyermark". In Ahačič, Kozma (ed.). Slovenske slovnice in pravopisi: spletišče slovenskih slovnic in pravopisov od 1584 do danes. Retrieved August 27, 2020.
  2. ^ Kitin, Marko (2013). "Jernej Kopitar". Ljubljana Municipal Library. Archived from the original on 2016-11-22. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  3. ^ "Kopitar, Jernej | Hrvatska enciklopedija". www.enciklopedija.hr. Retrieved 2022-08-03.
  4. ^ a b "Kopitar, Jernej (1780–1844)". Slovenska biografija. Ljubljana: Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Retrieved October 20, 2022.
  5. ^ Kolar, Ivan (1958). "Literarni sprehod po Ljubljani". Jezik in slovstvo. 3 (7): 314. Retrieved October 20, 2022. Na stavbišču za projektirano in v kolobarju zidano 'Baragovo semenišče' so kosti umrlih prekopali v skupno jamo .... Tu sta ostala v svojem grobu samo Ivan Tušek in Jernej Kopitar ...

References

  • Ann Arbor
    : University of Michigan, 1982.
  • Sagner
    , 2007.

Mario Grčević. Jernej Kopitar as a strategist of Karadžić’s reform of the literary language/Jernej Kopitar kao strateg Karadžićeve književnojezične reforme [1]. Filologija 53, 2009.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jernej Kopitar.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jernej_Kopitar&oldid=1219196469"