born Nov. 6, 1787, Tršić, Serbia, Ottoman Empire
died Feb. 6, 1864, Vienna
Serbian language scholar and folklorist.
He was largely self-taught as a writer. After the failure of a Serb revolt against Turkish rule, he left for Vienna (1813), where he was introduced to formal scholarship by the Slavist Jernej Kopitar. In 1814 he published a grammar of Serbian (see Serbo-Croatian language ) and in 1818 a dictionary; both promulgated a reformed Cyrillic alphabet and a new literary language based on colloquial Serbian rather than the prevailing literary language, which mixed archaic Serbian with Russian Church Slavic (see Old Church Slavonic language ). After decades of resistance and polemicizing, the renascent Serbian state accepted his reforms in 1868.