Vjekoslav (Alojzije) Babukić (16 July 1812 – 20 December 1875) was a

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

n revivalist and a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Biography

Babukić was born in Požega. He received a degree in law in 1832 in

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, north of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the ...

. He was a prominent follower of the

Illyrian movement The Illyrian movement (; ) was a pan-South-Slavic cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of the 19th century, around the years of 1835 t ...

, supporting the programme of cultural unification of

South Slavs South Slavs are Slavic people who speak South Slavic languages and inhabit a contiguous region of Southeast Europe comprising the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula. Geographically separated from the West Slavs and East Slavs by Austria, ...

under Illyrian name. As secretary of the Reading Room (''Čitaonica'') and '' Matica ilirska'' he was connected with prominent individuals in Croatia and other Slavic countries, distributed books and magazines, edited printed editions of older writers (

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

Andrija Kačić Miošić Andrija Kačić Miošić (; 17 April 1704 – 14 December 1760) was a Croatian poet and Franciscan friar, as well as a descendant of the Kačić noble family, one of the oldest and most influential Croatian noble families. Biography Born in ...

Pavao Ritter Vitezović Pavao Ritter Vitezović (; 7 January 1652 – 20 January 1713) was a Habsburg-Croatian polymath, variously described as a historian, linguist, publisher, poet, political theorist, diplomat, printmaker, draughtsman, cartographer, writer and printe ...

Junije Palmotić Junije (Džono) Palmotić, (also ''Giunio'' in Italian or ''Junius Palmotta'' in Latin) (1606 – 1657) was a Croatian literature#Baroque literature, Croatian baroque writer, poet and dramatist from the Republic of Ragusa. He was a member of the ...

Ignjat Đurđević Ignjat Đurđević, also known as Ignazio Giorgi (February 1675 – 21 January 1737) was a Dubrovnik, Ragusan baroque poet and translator, best known for his long poem ("The Sighs of the Repentant Mary Magdalene, Magdalene"). He wrote poetry i ...

Jerolim Kavanjin Jerolim Kavanjin, also known as Girolamo Cavagnini (4 February 1641 – 29 November 1714), was a Venetian poet from Spalato (now Split, Croatia) who wrote in the Croatian language. Biography Kavanjin was born into a wealthy and noble family o ...

) and worked on the establishment of many cultural and scientific institutions. In 1846, he was appointed as the first professor of Croatian at the Zagreb Royal Academy. Following a reorganization of the educational system he taught in a gymnasium since 1850 until his death. He published several treatises on the Illyrian alphabet and orthography, one poem, and minor contributions and translations in ''

Danica ilirska Danica ilirska was the first Croatian literary magazine launched on 10 January 1835 as a weekly supplement to ''Novine horvatske'' newspaper in Zagreb, the Kingdom of Croatia. It was initially published under the title of ''Danicza horvatzka, sl ...

'' which he also edited and redacted. In 1836, he published in ''Danica ilirska'' his ''Osnova slovnice slavjanske narěčja ilirskoga'' ("The Basics of the Slavic Grammar of the Illyrian Dialect"), the first Illyrian grammar which served as a linguistic norm for 50 years and the first Croatian attempt to write a scientific grammar of a language. His second grammar was written in German (), was translated to Italian () and published alongside his ''Ilirsko-němačko-talianski mali rěčnik'' ("Illyrian-German-Italian small dictionary"), written by Josip Drobnič. This dictionary Babukić also significantly amended up until the letter ''O'', together with Antun Mažuranić. The language standardized in Babukić's grammar has a Neoštokavian dialect basis, but also with elements from

Čakavian Chakavian or Čakavian (, , , proper name: or own name: ''čokovski, čakavski, čekavski'') is a South Slavic languages, South Slavic supradialect or language spoken by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmati ...

and

Kajkavian Kajkavian is a South Slavic languages, South Slavic supradialect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia and Gorski Kotar. It is part of the South Slavic dialect continuum, being transitional to the supradialects of Č ...

dialects. He advocated the use of etymological (morphophonological) orthography, as opposed to the strictly phonological orthography advocated by

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 moder ...

and his followers. Babukić abundantly exploited the existing literary traditions in various dialect for the Illyrian cause. As the first grammarian to realize Illyrian language conceptions, critics such as Vatroslav Jagić have described Babukić as "the first grammarian of the Illyrian dialect". He died in

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Babukic, Vjekoslav 1812 births 1875 deaths Linguists from Croatia Scholars from the Austrian Empire