Tomislav Maretić


Tomislav Maretić was a Croatian linguist and lexicographer.
He was born in Virovitica, where he attended primary school and the gymnasium in Varaždin, Požega and Zagreb. After graduating simultaneously Slavistics and Classical Philology at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zagreb in a three-year program, he passes his teacher exam for high-school teaching of Ancient Greek and Latin as primary, and Croatian 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 Slavic studies and philosophy with the thesis O nekim pojavama kvantitete i akcenta u jeziku hrvatskom ili srpskom. He further specialized in postdoctoral studies at the neogrammarian centers of Leipzig and Prague.
He was appointed professor extraordinarius for "Slavic philology with particular emphasis on
Croatian and Serbian history of language and literature" in 1886. In 1892 at the electional list of Magyar unionist party he was elected as a representative of Gospić, and since 1900 of Slunj kotar. In the period 1915 - 1918 he served as the president of JAZU, and twice as the head of the 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. In the 1880s he focused on Croatian orthography and alphabet issues, having published a few papers on it in which he was laying foundations for the acceptance of phonologically-based orthography. At the end of the 19th century he published two grammars: the "academic" and gymnasium version, in which he completely directed grammatical norm of the Croatian literary language towards Neoštokavian. Those two grammars represent the final confrontation with the competing conception of standard language advocated by Zagreb philological school. Beside Ivan Broz, he was among the first Shtokavian purists.
In 1907 he became editor of the massive dictionary compiled by the Academy, and until his death he has edited approximately 5 500 pages which makes him one of the most prolific Croatian lexicographers. He studied the language of Slavonian and Dalmatian writers and folk epics. He translated works from Polish, Latin and Ancient Greek, and some of the most well-known Croatian translations of the world's literature classics are his work. In order to translate the classics he formed accentual hexameter which Petar Skok called "Maretić's life's work". By his beliefs Maretić is a Croatian Vukovian, the advocate of the Croatian and Serbian linguistic unity and the usage of phonological orthography, idealizer of the "pure people's language" and of exclusively Štokavian basis of the Serbo-Croatian standard language.
He died in Zagreb.

Works