Ljudevit Gaj
| Ljudevit Gaj | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
8 August 1809 Krapina, Kingdom Croatia, (Austria-Hungary) |
| Died | 20 April 1872 (aged 62) Zagreb, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary |
| Residence | Zagreb, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary |
| Nationality | Croat |
| Citizenship | Austria-Hungary |
| Known for | Gaj's Latin alphabet, Illyrian Movement |
Ljudevit Gaj (pronounced [ʎûdeʋit ɡâːj]; 8 August 1809 – 20 April 1872), born Ludwig Gay, was a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer. He was one of the central figures of the pan-Slavist Illyrian Movement.
He was born in Krapina (then in the Varaždin County, Kingdom of Croatia, (Austria-Hungary)), on August 8, 1809. His father Johann Gay was a German immigrant from Hungarian Slovakia, and his mother was Juliana née Schmidt, the daughter of a German immigrant arriving in the 1770s. The Gays were originally of Burgundian Huguenot origin. They arrived to Batizovce in present-day Slovakia in 16th or 17th century. Thence they become serfs of Mariassy de Markusfalva and Batizfalva families in 18th century. As there was a lot of ethnic Germans in that area, the Gays were soon Germanised. Ljudevit's father originates from a branch that moved to the village of Markuševci.
Gaj started publishing very early; his 36-page booklet on stately manors in his native district, written in his native German, appeared already in 1826 as Die Schlösser bei Krapina.
In Buda in 1830 Gaj's Latin alphabet was published ("Brief Basics of the Croatian-Slavonic Orthography"), which was the first common Croatian orthography book (after the works of Ignjat Đurđević and Pavao Ritter Vitezović). The book was printed bilingually, in Croatian and German. The Croatians used the Latin alphabet, but some of the specific sounds were not uniformly represented. Gaj followed the example of Pavao Ritter Vitezović and the Czech orthography, using one letter of the Latin script for each sound in the language. He used diacritics and the digraphs lj and nj.
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