Have you ever wondered how we would speak today if there had been no Vuk Karad\u017ei\u0107 and his reform of the Cyrillic script, grammar, and dictionary? Would we, for example, have names starting with the letter \u201cJ,\u201d and would things be harder for us without the rule \u201cwrite as you speak, read as it is written\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We do not know the answer, because Vuk\u2019s reform officially \u201ctook hold\u201d in 1847, when The War for the Serbian Language<\/em> by \u0110uro Dani\u010di\u0107 and Poems<\/em> by Branko Radi\u010devi\u0107 were published. Only in 1868, several years after Vuk\u2019s death, did the Serbian language become official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ekavian pronunciation was introduced into official usage by Stojan Novakovi\u0107, his follower and the author of Grammar of the Serbian Language<\/em>, three decades after Vuk\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, a hypothesis of how we might speak today without Vuk was offered by historian Prof. Dr. Predrag J. Markovi\u0107 in the book Alternative History of Serbia<\/em>, published by Laguna. As a co-author together with historian \u010cedomir Anti\u0107, he cites examples from Sterija\u2019s comedies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n