Petar "Pero" Budmani ( sr-Cyrl, Перо Будмани; 27 October 1835 – 27 December 1914) was a writer, linguist, grammarian, and philologist from

Dubrovnik Dubrovnik (), historically known as Ragusa (; see notes on naming), is a city on the Adriatic Sea in the region of Dalmatia, in the southeastern semi-exclave of Croatia. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations in the Mediterran ...

and a renowned

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingualism, monolingual speakers in the World population, world's pop ...

Biography

Budmani was born in

/Ragusa, at the time part of the

Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central-Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence, ...

Kingdom of Dalmatia The Kingdom of Dalmatia ( hr, Kraljevina Dalmacija; german: Königreich Dalmatien; it, Regno di Dalmazia) was a crown land of the Austrian Empire (1815–1867) and the Cisleithanian half of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918). It encompassed the entir ...

. He completed gymnasium in Dubrovnik and then after 1853 moved to

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

to study medicine, then switched to law, but did not complete his studies, and would travel to his uncle's estate near

Ancona Ancona (, also , ) is a city and a seaport in the Marche region in central Italy, with a population of around 101,997 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region. The city is located northeast of Rome, on the Adriatic S ...

where he was exposed to the ideas of the ''

Risorgimento The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

''. In 1861 he got married and moved back to Dubrovnik. He became one of the prominent members of the

Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik The Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik ( sh-Cyrl-Latn, separator=" / ", Дубровачки србокатолички покрет, Dubrovački srbokatolički pokret) was a cultural and political movement of people from Dubrovnik who, while Catho ...

. Budmani wrote a seminal book in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

called ''Grammatica della lingua serbo-croata (illyrica)'' that described the

Serbo-Croatian grammar Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language that, like most other Slavic languages, has an extensive system of inflection. This article describes exclusively the grammar of the Shtokavian dialect, which is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuu ...

, published in Vienna in 1867. Because it was written primarily as a manual for use in the gymnasia in

Dalmatia Dalmatia (; hr, Dalmacija ; it, Dalmazia; see #Name, names in other languages) is one of the four historical region, historical regions of Croatia, alongside Croatia proper, Slavonia, and Istria. Dalmatia is a narrow belt of the east shore of ...

, it was restricted in scope and space, but it soon received high praise from

Đuro Daničić 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 Serbian philologist, ...

in ''

Rad JAZU ''Rad'' ( Croatian for ''proceedings'', ''work'') is an academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals se ...

'' #2 in 1868. Budmani's description of the limited use of

aorist Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the I ...

and

imperfect The imperfect (abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to w ...

and the subtleties of perfect was consistent with Croatian vernacular at the time. The title included the term "Serbo-Croat" in the title, with Illyrian in parentheses, making Budmani the first to have used the combined term

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...

for Croatian and Serbian in a grammar book title. In 1868, he started teaching at the Dubrovnik Gymnasium. In 1870 he was first elected as a member of the People's Party to the

Diet of Dalmatia The Diet of Dalmatia ( hr, Dalmatinski sabor, it, Dieta della Dalmazia) was the regional assembly of the Kingdom of Dalmatia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was founded in Zadar in 1861 and last convened in 1912, before being formally diss ...

. He was also elected to the Imperial Council twice, but renounced the position in Vienna in 1873. In 1876 he did the same in the Diet of Dalmatia. In 1880, Budmani was among the esteemed intellectuals that the Municipal Council of Dubrovnik had oversee the construction of a monument dedicated to

Ivan Gundulić Dživo Franov Gundulić ( it, Gianfrancesco Gondola; 8 January 1589 – 8 December 1638), better known today as Ivan Gundulić, was the most prominent Baroque poet from the Republic of Ragusa (now in Croatia). He is regarded as the Croatian nat ...

, at the time planned for 1888. In 1883 Budmani moved to

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

(at the time part of

Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia ( hr, Kraljevina Hrvatska i Slavonija; hu, Horvát-Szlavónország or ; de-AT, Königreich Kroatien und Slawonien) was a nominally autonomous kingdom and constitutionally defined separate political nation with ...

) and became the editor of the ''Rječnik'' (Dictionary) of the

Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Croatica, hr, Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, abbrev. HAZU) is the national academy of Croatia. HAZU was founded under patronage of the Croatian bishop Jo ...

(following the death of

). He left the Gundulić monument oversight committee to focus on his work for the Academy's Dictionary before the end of the decade (the grand

unveiling of the Gundulić monument The unveiling of the Gundulić monument in Dubrovnik on May 20, 1893, was a symbolical event in the political history of Dubrovnik, since it brought to the surface the wider tensions between the two political sides of the city, the Croats and t ...

only took place later, in 1893). In 1888 he also became a corresponding member of the

Serbian Learned Society 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 ...

and the

Serbian Royal Academy 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 ...

, and in 1889 he became one for the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...

. He remained the editor of the Dictionary until 1907. In 1907 he returned to the Castelferretti estate near Ancona, and lived there until 1913, when he returned to his native Dubrovnik. But already the following year, seriously ill and embittered for the persecution suffered at the hands of the Austrian police (who considered him a dangerous subversive), Pero Budmani fled from home, reached

and died there on December 27, 1914. Budmani spoke most of the European languages, including Old Slavonic, Greek, Latin, and several Asiatic languages. Robert D Greenberg, Associate Professor Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, describes him as a Croat linguist.

Selected works

Grammatica della lingua serbo-croata (''illirica'') Pietro Budmani

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Budmani, Pero 1835 births 1914 deaths People from Dubrovnik People from the Kingdom of Dalmatia Members of the Austrian House of Deputies (1870–1871) Members of the Austrian House of Deputies (1871–1873) Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik Book and manuscript collectors Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts People's Party (Dalmatia) politicians