Tomislav Maretić was a Croatian linguist and lexicographer.

He attended primary school in Virovitica and the gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 in Varaždin

Varaždin

Varaždin is a city in north Croatia, north of Zagreb on the highway A4. The total population is 47,055, with 38,746 on of the city settlement itself . The centre of Varaždin county is located near the Drava river, at...

, Požega

Požega, Croatia

Požega is a city in western Slavonia, eastern Croatia, with a total population of 26,403 . It is the administrative center of the Požega-Slavonia County.-Geography:...

 and Zagreb. After graduating simultaneously Slavistics and Classical Philology at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zagreb

University of Zagreb

The University of Zagreb is the biggest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of Southeastern Europe...

 in a three-year program, he passes his teacher exam for high-school teaching of Ancient Greek and Latin as primary, and Croatian

Croatian language

Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

 as a secondary course. In 1877 he works as a probationary, and since 1880 as an assistant teacher in Velika gimnazija in Zagreb. He received his Ph.D. in 1884 in Slavistics and philosophy with the thesis O nekim pojavama kvantitete i akcenta u jeziku hrvatskom ili srpskom ('On some changes of quantity and accent in Croatian or Serbian language'). He further specialized in postdoctoral studies in the neogrammarian centers of Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 and Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

.

He was appointed professor extraordinarius for "Slavic philology with particular emphasis on
Croatian and Serbian history of language and literature" in 1886 (since 1890 ordinary professor and JAZU member). In 1892 at the electional list of Magyar unionist party he was elected as a representative of Gospić

Gospic

Gospić is a town in the mountainous and sparsely populated region of Lika, Croatia. It is the administrative centre of Lika-Senj county. Gospić is located near the Lika River in the middle of a karst field....

, and since 1900 of Slunj

Slunj

Slunj is a town in the mountainous part of Central Croatia, located along the important North-South route to the Adriatic Sea between Karlovac and Plitvice Lakes National Park, on the meeting of the rivers Korana and Slunjčica...

 kotar. In the period 1915 - 1918 he served as the president of JAZU, and twice as the head of he philological-historical class of the academy, first from 1906–1913, then a second time from 1919-1928.

As a gymnasium student he published short literary works (signing as Tomislav). In the 1880s he focused on Croatian orthography and alphabet issues, having published a few papers on it (the study "Historija hrvatskoga pravopisa latinskijem slovima") in which he was laying foundations for the acceptance of phonologically-based orthography. At the end of 19th century he published two grammars: the "academic" ("Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika") and gymnasium ("Gramatika hrvatskoga jezika za niže razrede srednjih škola", both in 1899) version, in which he completely directed grammatical (morphosyntactical) norm of the Croatian language towards Neo-Štokavian speeches using as a base works that were completely unrepresentative of the contemporary Croatian language. At the same time, those two grammars represent the final confrontation with the conception of standard language

Standard language

A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...

 advocated by Zagreb philological school. Beside Ivan Broz

Ivan Broz

Ivan Broz was a Croatian linguist and literary historian.-Biography:Broz was born Klanjec where he attended primary school, then moved to primary school in Varaždin, and gymnasium in Karlovac, Požega, and Zagreb, where he graduated...

, he was among the first Shtokavian purists.

In 1907 he became editor of the massive dictionary compiled by the Academy, and until his death (from the lexeme maslo up to the lexeme pršutina) he has edited approximately 5 500 pages which makes him one of the most prolific Croatian lexicographers. He studied the language of Slavonia

Slavonia

Slavonia is a geographical and historical region in eastern Croatia...

n and Dalmatia

Dalmatia

Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....

n writers and folk epics

EPICS

The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System is a software environment used to develop and implement distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, telescopes and other large experiments. EPICS also provides SCADA capabilities...

. He translated works from Polish, Latin and Ancient Greek, and some of the most well-known Croatian translations of the world's literature classics (Mickiewicz

Adam Mickiewicz

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...

, Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

, Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

) are his work. In order to translate the classics he formed accentual hexameter

Hexameter

Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...

 which Petar Skok

Petar Skok

Petar Skok is a Croatian linguist, and one of the world's foremost onomastics experts.Skok was born in the village of Jurkovo Selo, Žumberak. From 1892 to 1900 he attended the Higher Real Gymnasium in Rakovac near Karlovac. At the University of Vienna he studied Romance and Germanic philology and...

 called "Maretić's life's work". By his beliefs Maretić is a Vukovian, the advocate of the cult of Vuk Karadžić in Croats, Croatian and Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

 linguistic unity and phonological orthography, idealizer of the "pure people's language" and of exclusively (Neo-)Štokavian basis of the Croatian standard language

Standard language

A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...

.

By analysing Maretić's linguistic activity with a century-long detachment, a few points tend to crystallize: Maretić's credit for the scientific (according to the contemporary insights) analysis of Neo-Štokavian dialect system, writing the best grammar of standard language

Standard language

A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...

 completely in accordance with that system, and numerous translations and editing of the Academy's dictionary have indebted Croatian culture for years to come. Therefore, it's ironical to say that Maretić's contributions (which are essential ingredients of the modern Croatian standard language) are simultaneously a part of Croatian literary language, but, looking from the perspective of Maretić's language viewpoints - have been completely discarded. Namely, the school of Croatian Vukovians, with Maretić as a foremost proponent, had several central points of advocation, three of which can be selected:

1. Štokavian purism, i.e. complete negation and suppression of the tri-dialectal dimension of Croatian language
2. historal-linguistic nihilism, i.e. adoration of the works of Vuk Karadžić and discarding the written record of he whole Croatian literary history, both the older works, and those contemporary to Maretić
3. fight against one of the most prominent features of Croatian language, namely the formative (morphological) openness and language purism manifested in the formation of Croatian counterparts for Greco-Roman internationalisms

Those three elements alone, much more than individual orthographical or accentological solutions, distinguish standard Serbian from standard Croatian - and since Maretić was language unitarist, those three characteristics were obstacles he strived to eliminate as much as he could. History eventually showed that he failed in his attempts, as the rest of Croatian Vukovians did.

20th century has seen the rise of the Kajkavian and Čakavian masterpieces of Croatian literature (Miroslav Krleža

Miroslav Krleža

Miroslav Krleža was a leading Croatian and Yugoslav writer and the dominant figure in cultural life of both Yugoslav states, the Kingdom and the Republic . He has often been proclaimed the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Miroslav Krleža was born in Zagreb, modern-day...

, Vladimir Nazor

Vladimir Nazor

Vladimir Nazor was the first head of state of modern Croatia. A member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia , he led the Croatian World War II wartime assembly, the ZAVNOH, and later served as the President of the Presidium of the People's Assembly of PR Croatia - the head of state of the People's...

), those two dialects penetrating Croatian standard language Maretić's futile efforts notwithstanding; Croatian language culture has absorbed older linguistic and literary heritage (Marko Marulić

Marko Marulic

Marko Marulić |Split]], 18 August 1450 – Split, 5 January 1524) was a Croatian national poet and Christian humanist, known as the Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance. He signed his works as Marko Marulić Splićanin , Marko Pečenić, Marcus Marulus ...

, Hanibal Lucić

Hanibal Lucic

Hanibal Lucić or Annibale Lucio was a Croatian Renaissance poet and playwright.- Biography :He was born to a Croatian noble family of Antun and Goja in Hvar, where he spent most of his life. Early in his youth, he was a judge and later became a lawyer of the Hvar municipality...

, Marin Držić

Marin Držic

Marin Držić is considered the finest Croatian Renaissance playwright and prose writer.- Life :Born into a large and well to do family in Dubrovnik, Držić was trained and ordained as a priest — a calling very unsuitable for his rebel temperament...

, Ivan Gundulić

Ivan Gundulic

Ivan Franov Gundulić is the most celebrated Croatian Baroque poet from the Republic of Ragusa. His work embodies central characteristics of Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation: religious fervor, insistence on "vanity of this world" and zeal in opposition to "infidels." Gundulić's major...

, Andrija Kačić Miošić

Andrija Kacic Miošic

Andrija Kačić Miošić was a Croatian poet and Franciscan monk.Born in Brist near Makarska, he became a Franciscan monk. He was educated in Zaostrog monastery and Buda...

) that Maretić systematically suppressed and diminished, seeing it, rightfully, as an obstacle towards "Croato-Serbian language union"; neologisms, from Bogoslav Šulek

Bogoslav Šulek

Bogoslav Šulek, born Bohuslav Šulek , was a Croatian philologist, historian and lexicographer. He founded much of the Croatian terminology in the areas of social and natural sciences, technology and civilization. He is considered one of the most influential Croatian philologists of all time.-Early...

 up to Tomislav Ladan

Tomislav Ladan

Tomislav Ladan was a Croatian essayist, critic and novelist.Ladan was born in Ivanjica, Serbia, and spent his formative years in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina , where he graduated at Philosophical Faculty in Sarajevo...

, have been an essential constituent of the Croatian language - again against the principal Maretić's linguistic dogmas. The whole description of the Croatian language system by the school of Croatian Vukovian (namely Maretić), based on the neogrammarian philology, has been replaced by more appropriate approach of structuralism (Dalibor Brozović

Dalibor Brozovic

Dalibor Brozović was a Croatian linguist, Slavist, dialectologist and politician. He studied the history of standard Slavic languages, especially Croatian. He was an active Esperantist since 1946, and wrote Esperanto poetry as well as translated works into the language. -Life and career:He was...

, Radoslav Katičić

Radoslav Katicic

Radoslav Katičić is a Croatian linguist, classical philologist, Indo-Europeanist, Slavist and Indologist, one of the most prominent Croatian scholars in the field of humanities.-Biography:...

, Stjepan Babić

Stjepan Babic

Stjepan Babić is a Croatian linguist and academic.-Biography:He was born in the small town of Oriovac in Brod-Posavina County, even though his biological parents are from Hrvatsko Zagorje. He attended primary school in Oriovac, and gymnasium in Slavonski Brod, Osijek and finally in Zagreb...

). However, Maretić's philological description of neoštokavian dialect, as exposed in his magisterial "Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskog ili srpskog jezika", remains, along with Broz

Ivan Broz

Ivan Broz was a Croatian linguist and literary historian.-Biography:Broz was born Klanjec where he attended primary school, then moved to primary school in Varaždin, and gymnasium in Karlovac, Požega, and Zagreb, where he graduated...

's "Hrvatski pravopis"/Croatian Orthography, the fundament of the final phasis of Croatian language

Croatian language

Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...

 standardization.

Notable works

• Lekcionarij Bernarda Spljećanina, JAZU, 208 pp., Zagreb, 1885
• Nov prilog za istoriju akcentuacije hrvatske ili srpske, JAZU, 225 pp., Zagreb, 1885
• O narodnim imenima i prezimenima u Hrvata i Srba, JAZU, 150 pp., Zagreb, 1886
• Veznici u slovenskijem jezicima, JAZU, 299 pp., Zagreb, 1887
• Slaveni u davnini, Matica hrvatska, 256 pp., Zagreb, 1889
• Kosovski junaci i događaji u narodnoj epici, JAZU, 115 pp., Zagreb, 1889
• Istorija hrvatskoga pravopisa latinskijem slovima, JAZU, 406 pp., Zagreb, 1889
• Slavenski nominalni akcenat s obzirom na litavski, grčki i staroindijski, JAZU, 64 pp., Zagreb,1890
• Život i književni rad Franje Miklošića, JAZU, 113 pp., Zagreb, 1892
• Gramatika hrvatskoga jezika za niže razrede srednjih škola, Kugli, 270 pp., Zagreb, 1899
• Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika, Kugli, 700 pp., Zagreb, 1899
• I. S. Turgenjev u hrvatskim i srpskim prijevodima, JAZU, 113 pp., Zagreb, 1904
• Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika: edited in multiple occasions more than 5 300 pages
• Metrika narodnih naših pjesama, JAZU, 200 pp., Zagreb, 1907
• Naša narodna epika, JAZU, 263 pp., Zagreb, 1909
• Jezik slavonskijeh pisaca, JAZU, 88 pp., 1910
• Jezik dalmatinskijeh pisaca XVIII. vijeka, JAZU, 92 pp., Zagreb, 1916
• Hrvatski ili srpski «jezični savjetnik», Jugoslavenska njiva, 509 pp., Zagreb, 1923
• Metrika muslimanske narodne epike, JAZU, 138 pp., Zagreb, 1936