Đuro Daničić ( sr-Cyrl, Ђуро Даничић, ; 4 April 1825 – 17 November 1882), born Đorđe Popović ( sr-cyr, Ђорђе Поповић) and also known as Đura Daničić ( sr-Cyrl, Ђура Даничић), was a

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hung ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...

, translator, linguistic historian and lexicographer. He was a prolific scholar at the

Belgrade Lyceum The Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia was the first higher education school in Serbia in which education was taught in Serbian language, Serbian. History The Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia ( sr, Лицеј Кнежевине Србиј� ...

Biography

He was born in

Novi Sad Novi Sad ( sr-Cyrl, Нови Сад, ; hu, Újvidék, ; german: Neusatz; see below for other names) is the second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the P ...

, in the family of Orthodox priest Jovan Popović. He attended schools in Novi Sad and

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% o ...

, and studied law at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...

. He published his first papers under the name Đuro Daničić in 1845, after the heroic Senj

Uskok The Uskoks ( hr, Uskoci, , singular: ; notes on naming) were irregular soldiers in Habsburg Croatia that inhabited areas on the eastern Adriatic coast and surrounding territories during the Ottoman wars in Europe. Bands of Uskoks fought a g ...

from a folk poem, and a name that he continued to use throughout the rest of his life. Under the influence of

Vuk Karadžić Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Стефановић Караџић, ; 6 November 1787 (26 October OS)7 February 1864) was a Serbian philologist, anthropologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the mode ...

and

Franz Miklosich Franz Miklosich (german: Franz Ritter von Miklosich, also known in Slovene as ; 20 November 1813 – 7 March 1891) was a Slovene philologist. Early life Miklosich was born in the small village of Radomerščak near the Lower Styrian town of Lj ...

, he started studying Slavic philology, to which he subsequently devoted his entire career. In 1856, he became the librarian of the People's Library in Belgrade and secretary of the Society of Serbian Literacy, and, in 1859, professor of the

(''Velika škola''). In 1866 he was invited to

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital and largest city of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb stands near the international border between Croatia and Sl ...

to serve as a secretary general of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU). He served as a secretary general on two occasions between 1866-1873 and 1877-1882. From 1873 he taught as a professor at Belgrade's

Grandes écoles Grandes may refer to: * Agustín Muñoz Grandes, Spanish general and politician * Banksia ser. Grandes, a series of plant species native to Australia * Grandes y San Martín, a municipality located in the province of Ávila, Castile and León, Spa ...

(former Belgrade Lyceum and future

University of Belgrade The University of Belgrade ( sr, / ) is a public university in Serbia. It is the oldest and largest modern university in Serbia. Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac- ...

), and in 1877 he returned to Zagreb where he played a key role in preparing the Academy's Dictionary, "Croatian or Serbian Dictionary of JAZU". He was editor of the first volume (A–Češula) that was published from 1880 to 1882. His death in 1882, in Zagreb, interrupted that work and he was buried in Marko's cemetery in Belgrade.

Works

Daničić played a key role of laying the foundation of Serbian philology, grammar, historical dictionary and dialectology on the basis of principles set by

. His translation of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

, mostly from German sources, also influenced Croatian translation literature. Daničić also assisted Karadžić in his translation of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

into

Serbian Serbian may refer to: * someone or something related to Serbia, a country in Southeastern Europe * someone or something related to the Serbs, a South Slavic people * Serbian language * Serbian names See also

* * * Old Serbian (disambiguat ...

in 1847. After undergoing a revision, both translations were accepted and are still in use today by the Serbian Orthodox Church and its members. In 1847, he published a well-known

polemical Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...

essay "The War for Serbian Language and Orthography", where he opposed linguistic ideas of Miloš Svetić, the pseudonymous Jovan Hadžić, Karadžić's main opponent, and supported Karadžić's

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mo ...

. He gave the theoretical background to Karadžić's concepts in his numerous linguistic works. Daničić also studied the older Serbian literature and his redactions of old manuscripts are still in use, like Theodossus' ''

Hagiography A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies migh ...

Saint Sava Saint Sava ( sr, Свети Сава, Sveti Sava, ; Old Church Slavonic: ; gr, Άγιος Σάββας; 1169 or 1174 – 14 January 1236), known as the Enlightener, was a Serbs, Serbian prince and Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox monk, the first ...

'' (1860), Domentian's ''Hagiographies of Saint Simeon and Saint Sava'' (1865), Gospels of Nicholas (''Nikoljsko jevanđelje'') (1864), ''Lives of Kings and Archbishops Serbian'' (1866) and numerous others. Daničić started scientific work as supporter of Karadžić's ideas of linguistic pan-Serbism (attribution of

Shtokavian dialect Shtokavian or Štokavian (; sh-Latn, štokavski / sh-Cyrl, italics=no, штокавски, ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. It ...

and written heritage to Serbian ethnos). His early works were ostensibly devoted to "Serbs of Catholic faith", for which he was criticized by young Vatroslav Jagić. In 1857, he published "Differences between Languages Serbian and Croatian" (written using the old orthography) where he identified Croatian with the Chakavian dialect. However, his attitudes evaluated towards promotion of pan-Yugoslavian ideology, much closer to the viewpoints of Illyrian movement, with which he was closely cooperating. That included linguistic unity of Croats and Serbs and the opinion that the Croatian literature is at the same time Serbian and vice versa. His linguistic papers were titled using "Croatian or Serbian" qualifier when he published in Zagreb, and "Serbian or Croatian" when published in Belgrade.

Legacy

He is included in The 100 most prominent Serbs.

Selected works

* ''Little Serbian Grammar'' (1850) * ''Serbian Syntax'' (1858) * ''Morphemes in Serbian or Croatian Language'' (1872) *'' History of Morphemes in Serbian or Croatian Language'' (1874) * ''Basics of Serbian or Croatian Language'' (1876) * ''Roots in Croatian or Serbian Language'' (1877) * ''Croatian or Serbian Dictionary, Volume 1 (A-češula)'' (1880–1882) * ''Serbian accents ''(1925)

References

Sources

Jovan Skerlić Jovan Skerlić (, ; 20 August 1877 – 15 May 1914) was a Serbian writer and literary critic.''Jovan Skerlić u srpskoj književnosti 1877–1977: Zbornik radova''. Posebna izdanja, Institut za knjizevnost i umetnost, Belgrade. He is seen as one ...

''Istorija nove srpske književnosti'' (Belgrade, 1921) pages 255-271 *

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Serbica, sr-Cyr, Српска академија наука и уметности, САНУ, Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU) is a national academy and the ...

: http://www.sanu.ac.rs/English/Clanstvo/IstClan.aspx?arg=130 * (old Serbian) * (old Serbian)

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Danicic, Duro Linguists from Serbia Linguists from Croatia Translators of the Bible into Serbian Eastern Orthodox Christians from Serbia Members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Writers from Novi Sad 1825 births 1882 deaths University of Vienna alumni Belgrade Higher School faculty 19th-century translators Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia faculty