But now we hear the steps of other Southern Slavs whose mission is to
call the people to their own language and to make the language worthy
of the people. With the encumbrances that in the centuries had so
disfigured it, the archaisms and the pseudo-classicisms, it would
never come to pass that one great Serbian nation would be formed. And
that is what Vuk Kara[vz]i['c], throughout his life, was aiming at.
While Milo[vs] Obrenovi['c] in Serbia took up the arms which Kara
George had dropped, and used some others of his own, Vuk Kara[vz]i['c]
was tramping with his wooden leg round Serbia and Montenegro,
Macedonia and Bulgaria, Syrmia and the Banat. He longs to find out
where his country lies and, having found his people, to use their own
language as the spoken and the written language of the nation. For
this purpose he had to reform the Cyrillic alphabet, as it contained,
like Russian and Bulgarian, letters that are not pronounced; and the
Serbian produced by him is a purely phonetic language. He had, of
course, his enemies, particularly in the clergy, who were the most
important class. What he was doing with the Palaeo-Slav displeased them
hugely. Here was he trying to substitute what they called "a language
of ox-herds" for that one which had not alone a venerable tradition
but was the hall-mark of their superiority. A certain Dr. Haji['c]
wrote a monograph in which he demonstrated most emphatically that it
was the enviable happiness of the Serbian people to have no grammar.
It was hinted by some other opponents of Vuk that he might well be an
Austrian agent, who, in order to disturb the people, was now raising
questions of a most contentious nature, which had previously not been
thought of. But when the great philologist died in 1861 in Vienna he
had long been recognized as one of the most ardent patriots. His three
volumes of national songs excited the enthusiasm of Jacob Grimm, who
rushed off to learn this new language, and with essays and letters to
reveal it to Goethe. Translators, commentators, expounders and editors
flocked from all sides, and Vuk was regarded as Serbia incarnate.