SOURCE: Ivić, Pavle. “Kopitar and the Evolution of Vuk Karadžić's Views on the Serbian Literary Language.” In Papers in Slavic Philology 2: To Honor Jernej Kopitar 1780-1980, edited by Rado L. Lencek and Henry R. Cooper, Jr., pp. 99-107. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1982.

In the following essay, Ivić explores Jernej Kopitar's considerable influence on Karadžić's work.

The extent of Jernej Kopitar's contributions to the work of Vuk Karadžić is reflected in three facts: he persuaded Vuk to begin writing systematically; he defined the main points of Vuk's program of work (publishing folk poetry, a grammar, a dictionary, and a translation of the Holy Bible); and he suggested to him fundamental views on the literary language, the alphabet and orthography.

Vuk accepted Kopitar's views (Kopitar 1857: passim) that every nation ought to use its own language in literature, that the field of use of the...