Draft:Adam Dragosavljevic

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Adam Dragosavljević (Beremend, Habsburg Monarchy. 18 February 1800, Julian Calendar or 1 March 1800, Gregorian Calendar - Opatovac, Austrian Empire, 16 June 1862, Julian Calendar or 28 June 1862, Gregorian Calendar) was a Serbian writer, translator, linguist, philologist, pedagogue, lexicographer and lexicologist. A respected authority on South Slav dialects, he wrote the first modern Serbian phonetic primer in 1825. He is considered one of the most indefatigable agents in the regeneration of the Serbian language and literature, along with Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Đuro Daničić, Milan Rešetar and others.

One of the first conectors of Serbo-Croatian dialect material in the multi-national Habsburg Monarchy was Vuk Stefanović Karadžić himself. During his stay in Novi Sad, Karadžić found a faithful disciple and co-worker in the person of Adam Dragosavljević.

His name is today connected to the Serbian language reform of the 19th century, when thousands of words were coined or reviewed, and the alphabet was abridged (doing away with repetitive and superfluous letters), enabling a phonetic alphabet and language to keep up with scientific progress and became the official language of the Serb nation in 1878.

Biography

Adam Dragosavljević was born at Beremend, a village in Baranya county, Hungary. He studied in Serbian schools in Beremend, Kisvalud (Branjina) and Kacsfalu (Jagodnjak), and in Hungarian schools at Harsany in Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen county in northern Hungary. In 1817 he enrolled at a Teacher's College in Sombor, where he surprised his professors and fellow students alike in his final year (1819) with O djialektu srpskog jezika (About the Serbian Dialect) considered a treatise in dialectology proper . He then left Sombor for Novi Sad, where the obtained a thorough knowledge of Latin and German languages, and made an acquaintance of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. After completing his studies in Latin and German languages, he worked as a teacher in Vinkovci (1822-1823), Siklós (1824-1827), Mohacs (1827-1830) , Vukovar (1830-1838) (there in 1831 he married Maria Ristić with whom he had three children) , and Šid (1840). Several times he quit teaching to become a notary in Šid, Gibarac , and Opatovac, and in 1840 Dragosavljević was nominated inspector of schools in Šid. There he began to devote himself to the restoration of the Serbian language and literature from classical foreign books, and by the augmentation of the native vocabulary from ancient Serbian books and texts.

He started writing for Letopis matice srpske and Bogoslav Šulek's paper "Branislav", printed in Belgrade, in 1844-1845. Dragosavljević, known for possessing an elegant style, was inspired by the foreign and Serbian masterpieces of Lessing, Goethe, Wieland, Marmontel, Voltaire, Dositej Obradović, Pavle Solarić, Njegoš and others.

He wrote the first Serbian phonetic primer -- "Mali bukvar srpski" (1825), -- two years before Vuk Karadžić released his. He also wrote "Računica" and "Mali katihizis" (1827). A collected edition of his works, consisting for the most part of meticulous research in the Serbian language and national folksongs, was published in Letopis matice srpske, 1827-1858. His original productions "Vukova prepiska", also made up of letters, were edited by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and published posthumously at Belgrade in 1910, in 5 volumes. Editions of his "Nemacka gramatika" (German Grammar) appeared in Pest (1833), Novi Sad (1843), and Belgrade (1853). His "Protokoli od razliciti pismeni i knjizevni socinjenija i poslova" remained in manuscript form for a long time.

Adam Dragosavljević gave Vuk Karadžić some 3,000 national songs from the counties of Baranja and Srem for his collection. Dragosavljević also collected medieval works (Srbulje, Oktoih, homilies) by our Serbian scribe-monks and other earlier writer from the dawn of recorded Serbian history (going back more than a thousand years).

As a teacher in Siklós he began writing according to Vuk's language reforms. His grammar books, one for children and the other for adults, got him in trouble with the Siklos authorities who viewed Dragosavljević as an impediment to their two-language (German and Hungarian) national program. A national program could only be carried out and advanced successfully in the framework of Serbian autonomy, which was compromised by the Austrian crown. He redeemed himself when he wrote: "Deutsche Grammatik fur die serbische Jugend verfasst" (Nemačka gramatika: za decu i za svakoga, koji je rad nemački jezik iz knjîga da nauči).

His translation of "Psalms" was published in Vienna in 1833 and reprinted many times. The final Serbian revision of the New and Old Testament took place in 1868, changing basically only the liturgical terms and proper names to make them agree with standard Croatian Catholic liturgical terminology. This was done my Milan Rešetar, another outstanding Serbian linguist whose scientific work focused on the same concerns as did Vuk Karadžić and Jernej Kopitar at the beginning of the 19th century in Vienna. It was Kopitar who first influenced Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in forming a new standard for the Serbian literary language based on common use.

Dragosavljević played a significant role in the evolution of the Serbian literary language at the time of Vukovian reforms.

He died in the Summer of 1862 at his daughter's place in Opatovac.There is a statue of his bust in a park at Beremend in Hungary, his place of birth.

Bibliography

• "Oda G. Stef. Stankovicu Epis" (Buda, 1829).
• "Preosvestenomu gospodinu Stefanu Stankovicu pravoslavnom skoropostavljenom episkopu budimskom pripevka /od ucitelja Muackog/" (Buda, 1829).
• "Postanak' slavenski slova ili pismenost' kakva je i kakva treba da je u srbskom' jezyku" (1840).
• "Nemacka gramatika za decu srpsku" (Novi Sad, 1843).
• "Nemacka gramatika : za decu i za svakoga, koji je rad nemacki jezik iz knjiga da nauci" (1851).
• "Å kolovanje Adama Dragosavljevica", priredio Slavko Gavrilovic.
• "Zbornik Matice srpske za knjizevnost i jezik".

Major Translation

• "Prevod Psaltira : kao prva proba na srpskom jeziku" (Vienna, 1833)

References

Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D0%94%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%B2%D1%99%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences: http://www.sanu.ac.rs/English/Clanstvo/IstClan.aspx?arg=145