Sava Mrkalj was born in the hamlet of Mrkalji, Lasinjski Sjeni\u010dak village, in 1783. Having completed his primary school education in Sjeni\u010dak and a theological seminary in Pla\u0161ki in 1789, he got a job as a teacher at the Slavonic-Serb School in Gospi\u0107. Later, he moved to Zagreb to attend a higher education institution named archigymnasium, before studying philosophy. Mrkalj took his degree in philosophy and mathematics at the University of Pest in today\u2019s Budapest. It was there that he in 1810 published his lifetime achievement Salo debeloga jera libo azbukoprotres (Fat of the Thick Yer, i.e. Alphabet Reshuffling), which shocked the scientific audience and fascinated philologists Jernej Kopitar and Vuk Karad\u017ei\u0107.<\/p>\n
In his Pismenica in 1814, Karad\u017ei\u0107 uses Mrkalj\u2019s alphabet “because for the Serbian language there cannot be an easier or a clearer one”. This is owing to the fact that, in his Salo debeloga Jera libo azbukoprotres, Mrkalj had advocated a reform of the then outdated and incomprehensible grammar used in church and literature, and a phonetic script based on the language spoken by people. He radically reformed the current alphabet and proposed a new one based on the “write as you speak” rule. He is considered Vuk Karad\u017ei\u0107\u2019s predecessor. Mrkalj knew Latin and French, and had an understing of Greek and Hebrew, which was of great benefit to his philological talent. He also wrote sonnets.<\/p>\n
In July 1811 Mrkalj asked to enter a monastic order at the Gomirje Monastery and was soon accepted. He was ordained as Brother Julian. Having come to odds with Church authorities and Metropolitan Stratimirovi\u0107, Mrkalj was stripped of his rank by the Consistory in 1813 and dismissed from the monastery. Subsequently, he worked as a private tutor. Fearing retributions from the Church hierarchy, in 1817 Mrkalj published a book entitled Palinodija, in which he retracted his alphabet and orthographic reform. Sava Mrkalj died in a Vienna mental hospital in 1833.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mrkalj had advocated a reform of the then outdated and incomprehensible grammar used in church and literature, and a phonetic script based on the language spoken by people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1252,"template":"","pozicija":[],"class_list":["post-1251","znameniti-srbi","type-znameniti-srbi","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n