Đuro Daničić

Đuro Daničić

Đuro Daničić (Serbian Cyrillic: Ђуро Даничић, pronounced [dʑǔːrɔ dânitʃitɕ]) (April 4, 1825 in Novi Sad – November 17, 1882 in Zagreb), was a Serbian philologist, translator, linguistic historian and lexicographer. He was a prolific scholar at the Belgrade's Grande École.

Biography

He was born Đorđe Popović in the family of Orthodox priest Jovan Popović. He attended schools in Novi Sad and Bratislava, and studied law at the University of Vienna. He published his first papers under the name Đuro Daničić in 1845, after the heroic Senj's Uskok from a folk poem, and a name that he continued to use throughout the rest of his life. Under the influence of Vuk Karadžić and Franc Miklošič, 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 Belgrade Lyceum (Velika škola). In 1866, he was elected secretary general of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU) in 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 interrupted that work and his body was buried in Marko's cemetery in Belgrade.

Works

Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Croatian or Serbian Dictionary) 1882.

Up to these days Daničić has remained the biggest worker on documentation and attestation of Serbian language. Even when his theoretic interpretations were not of highest scientific standard, analysis of material was performed thoroughly and reliably. Daničić translated the Old Testament himself, mostly from German sources (which possessed Old Slavonic and old Serbian texts), and also assisted Karadžić in his translation of the New Testament into Serbian in 1847. After undergoing a revision, both translations were accepted and are still in current use today by the Serbian Orthodox Church and its faithful members.

In 1847, he published renowned polemics essay "The War for Serbian Language and Orthography", where he opposed linguistic ideas of Miloš Svetić, better known as Jovan Hadžić, Karadžić's main opponent, and supported Karadžić's phonemic orthography. 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 of Saint Sava (1860), Domentian's Hageographies 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 and written heritage to Serbian ethnos). His early works were ostensibly devoted to "Serbs of Catholic faith", for which he was criticized even by young Vatroslav Jagić. In 1857, he published "Differences between Languages Serbian and Croatian" (written using the old orthography) where he identified Croatian with Chakavian dialect. However, his attitudes evaluated towards promotion of pan-Yugoslavian ideology, much closer to the viewpoints of Illyrian movement, whom he was closely cooperating with. 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.

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

References

Jovan Skerlić Istorija nove srpske književnosti (Belgrade, 1921) pages 255-271

External links

• (Serbian) Article in "Patriot magazine" by Anja Jeftić^{[dead link]}

Persondata
Name	Danicic, Duro
Alternative names
Short description	Serbian linguist
Date of birth	April 4, 1825
Place of birth
Date of death	November 17, 1882
Place of death