Ivan Broz (Croatian pronunciation: [ǐʋan brôːz]; 21 January 1852 – 25 December 1893) was a Croatian linguist and literary historian. He is most known for his book Croatian Orthography[1] (Hrvatski Pravopis in Croatian).

Ivan Broz
Born(1852-01-21)January 21, 1852
DiedDecember 25, 1893(1893-12-25) (aged 41)
Occupation(s)linguist, historian

Biography

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Broz was born in Klanjec where he attended primary school. After this, he moved and began attending a primary school in Varaždin. Yet again, his family moved, and he finished his Pre-University Education at Karlovac gymnasium: where he graduated[citation needed]. In Innsbruck, he started studying theology, but eventually abandoned it in order to study the Croatian language, history, and geography at the newly established Croatian university in Zagreb. He served as a substitute teacher in Zagreb, and as a regular teacher in the upper secondary schools in Osijek, Požega, and Zagreb. He received his Ph.D. in 1888.[2] After attending Vatroslav Jagić's lectures on Slavic studies in Vienna, he set off to do fieldwork across Bosnia and Herzegovina and southern Croatia. During this fieldwork, Broz became ill and his condition worsened, ultimately causing his death. Broz died in Zagreb.

Work

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Croatian Orthography (Hrvatski pravopis), 1911 edition

In 1885, in Matica hrvatska, he was appointed the editor of Hrvatske narodne pjesme (Croatian folk songs). In his Crtice iz hrvatske književnosti, a two-volume work, he gave an extensive overview of the oldest Croatian literary monuments. He authored a study on the Croatian imperative and numerous puristic articles (Filologičke sitnice). In 1889, he was appointed to make a normative guide for Croatian.

In 1892, he published his most important work, Hrvatski pravopis (Croatian Orthography), which was reprinted under the editorship of Dragutin Boranić's until 1916. That normative guide, which was strictly based on Karadžić-Daničić's normative conception but formed chiefly upon the normative role model of the Croatian philologist Marcel Kušar, established the Croatian standard.[citation needed] In fact most of the later Croatian normative manuals, in most of the prescriptions, are mere stylisations of Broz's ground-breaking work.

Broz left a deep mark in the final standardisation of Croatian: thanks to him, there was no normative duality, which was threatened by the introduction of phonologically based spelling in Dalmatia and Bosnia (manual by Frane Vuletić), and by the introduction of some rules from the normative standard of the Zagreb school (separate writing of the future tense, writing foreign names as in the original, avoiding voicing assimilation in most cases (podcijeniti, odčepiti, etc.), morphological forms in several cases (mladac/mladci, etc.)). He established firm ground for continuity with the older (chiefly Dubrovnik) normative tradition and secured a painless transition to the final normative form, avoiding a controversy like that which closely followed the linguistic interventions of his contemporary Tomislav Maretić.

Sources

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  • "Umro Ivan Broz". hrt.hr (in Croatian). Croatian Radiotelevision. 25 December 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2012.
  1. ^ Damjanović, Stjepan (2003-01-01). "BROZ'S COMPETENCY OF SLAVIC AND CROATIAN LINGUISTIC HERITAGE". Fluminensia: Journal for Philological Research. 15 (1): 1–8. ISSN 0353-4642.
  2. ^ Milorad Živančević (1971). Živan Milisavac (ed.). Jugoslovenski književni leksikon [Yugoslav Literary Lexicon] (in Serbo-Croatian). Novi Sad (SAP Vojvodina, SR Serbia): Matica srpska. p. 53.