Vuk Karadžić began a series of tasks which were to become his life’s work.
Unlike Dositej Obradović, Karadžić knew that change could only come about by a wholesale shift in thinking about the standard form of Serbian. He adopted the principle of “write as you speak”—that is, words should be spelt as they are pronounced, as phonetically as possible. He was not going to reform the written language, but rather take the vernacular as the model for the written form. To this end, he set about devising a Cyrillic alphabet appropriate to the task for which he intended it. He discarded letters for which there was no sound in the modern spoken language, and introduced new ones to represent sounds for which there were no signs. He used his own native dialect and pronunciation as a base from which to begin his work, which caused some teething problems. For example, in his region people did not use the sound “h” and would often omit it from words where it should etymologically be employed. Gradually, he produced an orthography that was a compromise among different local variations and which could function across the territories where the Serbs lived.
Besides the alphabet, he worked on a dictionary and grammar books in order to codify the rules of the vernacular language. For the first time, the spoken Serbian language was made into an instrument fit for all the tasks required in the modern world. Today’s standard Serbian is the legacy of Karadžić’s programme of reforms and he is widely regarded as the father of the language.
He is equally well known as the first person to begin a systematic collection of Serbian folk songs. This aspect of his work was linked to his linguistic project, as songs provided him with examples of the usage and meanings of words and phrases that acted as models. It was also part of his ethnographic aims to produce a record of Serbian customs and traditions. He began by writing out the songs he could remember from childhood. He published later volumes by visiting Serbian villages, where he would sit and listen to local singers with pen and paper in hand. He knew and recorded some of the more celebrated bards of the time, both men and women. For example, he noted down the song about the First Serbian Uprising, “The Start of the Revolt against the Dahijas”, from Filip Višnjić himself. This aspect of his work met with great success. His collections were celebrated in Europe where he was rewarded with an honorary doctorate from the University of Leipzig while receiving a pension from the Russian Tsar.
There was also a reading public thirsty for such poetry brought from the margins of Europe, a kind of exotic fancy for the educated imagination of an audience that had long forgotten its own origins in oral culture. This reception of Serbian epic ballads was really the response of a western public anxious to know more about a primitive culture. The figures from these narratives represented heroes lost in the mists of battles fought long before, in a land existing more in the realms of a fairy tale than a real place with real people. In their poetry the Serbs appeared as warlike children, not quite ready for civilized society. These images of Serbian society have survived in the negative traits associated with the Balkans today. Karadžić brought a Serbian cultural presence into the wider European mainstream but at the risk of a twisted interpretation.
It was not possible to promote reforms that would encourage the modernizing tendencies in Serbian society without making enemies. The Orthodox Church was opposed to Karadžić’s objectives for the written language. It mounted a campaign to protect the dominant position of the liturgical language as the standard written form, and also in defence of its social prestige and political position as the foremost national cultural institution. The Church’s response to his translation of the New Testament in 1847 was swift and sharp, condemning
Unlike Dositej Obradović, Karadžić knew that change could only come about by a wholesale shift in thinking about the standard form of Serbian. He adopted the principle of “write as you speak”—that is, words should be spelt as they are pronounced, as phonetically as possible. He was not going to reform the written language, but rather take the vernacular as the model for the written form. To this end, he set about devising a Cyrillic alphabet appropriate to the task for which he intended it. He discarded letters for which there was no sound in the modern spoken language, and introduced new ones to represent sounds for which there were no signs. He used his own native dialect and pronunciation as a base from which to begin his work, which caused some teething problems. For example, in his region people did not use the sound “h” and would often omit it from words where it should etymologically be employed. Gradually, he produced an orthography that was a compromise among different local variations and which could function across the territories where the Serbs lived.
Besides the alphabet, he worked on a dictionary and grammar books in order to codify the rules of the vernacular language. For the first time, the spoken Serbian language was made into an instrument fit for all the tasks required in the modern world. Today’s standard Serbian is the legacy of Karadžić’s programme of reforms and he is widely regarded as the father of the language.
He is equally well known as the first person to begin a systematic collection of Serbian folk songs. This aspect of his work was linked to his linguistic project, as songs provided him with examples of the usage and meanings of words and phrases that acted as models. It was also part of his ethnographic aims to produce a record of Serbian customs and traditions. He began by writing out the songs he could remember from childhood. He published later volumes by visiting Serbian villages, where he would sit and listen to local singers with pen and paper in hand. He knew and recorded some of the more celebrated bards of the time, both men and women. For example, he noted down the song about the First Serbian Uprising, “The Start of the Revolt against the Dahijas”, from Filip Višnjić himself. This aspect of his work met with great success. His collections were celebrated in Europe where he was rewarded with an honorary doctorate from the University of Leipzig while receiving a pension from the Russian Tsar.
There was also a reading public thirsty for such poetry brought from the margins of Europe, a kind of exotic fancy for the educated imagination of an audience that had long forgotten its own origins in oral culture. This reception of Serbian epic ballads was really the response of a western public anxious to know more about a primitive culture. The figures from these narratives represented heroes lost in the mists of battles fought long before, in a land existing more in the realms of a fairy tale than a real place with real people. In their poetry the Serbs appeared as warlike children, not quite ready for civilized society. These images of Serbian society have survived in the negative traits associated with the Balkans today. Karadžić brought a Serbian cultural presence into the wider European mainstream but at the risk of a twisted interpretation.
It was not possible to promote reforms that would encourage the modernizing tendencies in Serbian society without making enemies. The Orthodox Church was opposed to Karadžić’s objectives for the written language. It mounted a campaign to protect the dominant position of the liturgical language as the standard written form, and also in defence of its social prestige and political position as the foremost national cultural institution. The Church’s response to his translation of the New Testament in 1847 was swift and sharp, condemning
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