Serbian Dictionary, in German and Latin Words.
Collected and made public by Vuk Stefanović.
The Serbian Dictionary (Srpski rječnik) by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić was printed in the printing house of the Armenian Monastery in Vienna in 1818. It contains 26,270 words used by people in Serbia, Srem and Vojvodina. The words are interpreted (translated) into German and Latin descriptions and expressions.
The Serbian Dictionary (Srpski rječnik) by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić was printed in the printing house of the Armenian Monastery in Vienna in 1818. It contains 26,270 words used by people in Serbia, Srem and Vojvodina. The words are interpreted (translated) into German and Latin descriptions and expressions. As early as 1815, Vuk Karadžić started to collect materials for the Serbian Language Dictionary, as suggested by Jernej Kopitar (1780–1844), the Censor for Slavic Languages at the Vienna Court Library. During 1815 and 1816, Vuk lived in the Šišatovac Monastery where, assisted by his friend, poet Lukian Mušicki (1777–1837) analysed words that would find their place in the Dictionary. The manuscript was completed already in 1816, but because of the lack of means and the polemic with the opponents, the Dictionary was published in 1818. The Dictionary comprises the foreword, a list of praenumeration subscribers, grammar and table with Serbian, several Slavic and western alphabets for purposes of inter-comparison. The Dictionary itself was entirely printed two-column, and has 928 columns. Vuk wrote the foreword of the Dictionary in the form of treatise addressed to his opponents in polemic. The date of the Foreword is 10 October 1818. Vuk was aware of the deficiencies in the first edition of the Serbian Grammar printed in 1814, and published the second, extended edition thereof in his Serbian Dictionary. Thus, the first edition of the dictionary became one of the crucial steps in the struggle for language, because it laid the pure people-spoken, popular language as the foundation for the literary language. Only six years later, in 1824, the second edition of the Serbian Grammar was translated into German language by Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), a German writer.
Artistic realization of the stamp: MA Marija Vlahović, academic graphic artist.
Expert collaboration: Eliana Gavrilović, MPhil, Museum of Vuk and Dositej, Belgrade.
