Vuk's reform (Serbian: Вукова реформа, Vukova reforma) was a reform of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and orthography conducted by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in the first half of the 19th century. The reform aimed to standardize the literary language based on vernacular speech, in accordance with the principle of "one letter, one sound" and the motto "write as you speak, and read as it is written". This decade-long process represented a radical break with the prevailing Slavonic-Serbian linguistic tradition, which was the language of the educated elite and the church but was unintelligible to the wider populace. Vuk's work was built upon the earlier efforts of Sava Mrkalj and was carried out with the crucial support and guidance of the Slovenian linguist Jernej Kopitar. The reform officially began with the publication of Pismenica serbskoga jezika (Serbian Grammar) in 1814 and achieved a symbolic victory in 1847. However, Vuk's orthography was officially adopted in the Principality of Serbia only in 1868, four years after his death. The reform faced fierce opposition from church circles and the conservative intelligentsia but ultimately laid the foundation for the modern Serbian standard language.
Background Until the 18th century, the Serbs used two linguistic expressions: Serbian recension of Church Slavonic, the language of the church and medieval tradition, and the vernacular language. Due to historical circumstances and the position of Serbs in the southern Habsburg monarchy, the Serbian Orthodox Church created a distinct linguistic form known as Slavonic-Serbian. In the latter half of the 18th century, with the advent of the Enlightenment, the unintelligibility of Slavonic-Serbian, especially in secular texts, became a growing problem. This created a need to adapt the language and script to the characteristics of Serbian vernacular speech, paving the way for linguistic reforms. Some authors, like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, had written in a language close to the vernacular as early as the beginning of the 18th century, but their works did not have a widespread impact.
Key influences and the beginning of the reform After the collapse of the First Serbian Uprising in 1813, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864) moved to Vienna. There, he met Jernej Kopitar, a prominent Slavist and censor for Slavic books in the Habsburg monarchy. Kopitar recognized Vuk's potential and became his mentor, guiding him toward collecting folk literature and working on language and orthography reform. Kopitar introduced Vuk to the work of the German philologist Johann Christoph Adelung, whose phonetic principle, "write as you speak, and read as it is written," became the guiding idea of Vuk's reform. With Kopitar's help, Vuk published Pismenica serbskoga jezika po govoru prostoga naroda (Grammar of the Serbian Language According to the Speech of the Common People) in 1814, which laid out the foundations of his alphabet and orthography reform.
Reform of the script and orthography
Sava Mrkalj
Before Vuk, the most significant reform attempt was made by Sava Mrkalj. In his 1810 booklet Salo debeloga jera libo azbukoprotres (The Zeal of the Thick Yer or the Alphabet Shaker), he proposed reducing the alphabet to 29 letters based on the phonetic principle. Mrkalj suggested removing all superfluous letters and introducing digraphs with the soft sign (ь) for palatal sounds, so that the letters њ, љ, ђ, ћ were written as нь, ль, дь, ть. However, due to strong opposition from church circles, led by Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović, Mrkalj's reform was rejected, and he himself renounced his work under pressure.... Legend:
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić Vuk continued where Mrkalj left off, perfecting his ideas and fully implementing the phonetic principle. In his Pismenica of 1814 and later in the first edition of the Srpski rječnik (Serbian Dictionary) of 1818, Vuk finalized the reform of the alphabet:
He removed all letters that did not have a corresponding sound in the vernacular. For six sounds that lacked a letter, Vuk devised new graphemes: Љ (Lj) and Њ (Nj) were created by ligating the letters Л (L) and Н (N) with the soft sign (Ь). Ђ (Đ) was adopted from a design by Lukijan Mušicki, by modifying the letter Ћ (Ć). Ћ (Ć) was adopted from old Serbian manuscripts, modeled on the letter Derv (ꙉ). Џ (Dž) was adopted from old Romanian manuscripts. Ј (J) was adopted from the Latin alphabet, which caused the greatest resistance from church circles. He initially omitted the letter Х (H), believing it did not exist in vernacular speech, but later reinstated it in 1836 after realizing it was used in southern regions (Montenegro, Bosnia, Dubrovnik). In this way, Vuk created a perfectly phonetic alphabet with 30 letters, where each sound corresponds to a single letter, and each letter represents a single sound. Legend: Removed letters New letters
Opposition and the struggle for acceptance Vuk's reform met with immense and prolonged resistance. Between 1814 and 1847, its victory was by no means certain. The main opponents were:
The Serbian Orthodox Church: Led by Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović of Karlovci, the church saw Vuk's reform as an attack on the tradition and sanctity of the Church Slavonic language. Opponents accused Vuk of attempting to Catholicize the Serbs by introducing the Latin letter 'j'. The Conservative Intelligentsia: The learned men of the time, led by Jovan Hadžić (pen name Miloš Svetić), considered the vernacular "vulgar" and "rustic," unworthy of literature and science. The Principality of Serbia: The authorities in Serbia, under the influence of the church, long forbade the printing of books in Vuk's orthography. Vuk was primarily criticized for abandoning the Church Slavonic foundation, introducing "indecent" vernacular words into his Serbian Dictionary, and using the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect (Ijekavian) as the basis for the literary language. Despite everything, Vuk engaged in sharp polemics with his opponents and received support from esteemed European intellectuals, such as Jacob Grimm and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who were captivated by Serbian folk poetry.
Victory of the reform and official recognition The pivotal year for the victory of Vuk's ideas was 1847. In that year, a younger generation of Serbian intellectuals published four seminal works in the reformed vernacular language and Vuk's orthography, proving the language's capacity for the highest artistic and scholarly achievements:
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