Krizanic and the German Language

Abstract

Krizanic was greatly concerned with the contamination of the Slavic culture, particularly by the German. But as a cultural purist, he did not blame the loss of Slavic purism on the German influence, but on Slavic weakness. In fact, he was a scholar of the German language & had great respect for it, being the core of strength in German nationalism. As in his Slavic writings, he modified German orthography to suit himself, but no so systematically as with his native lang. He was also interested in etymology of German loan words, which he felt must be stricken from the Slavonic langs. His knowledge of German was uneven: he used the Austro-Bavarian dialect & was unaware of its divergences from literary Ger. Despite his efforts toward orthographic reform, he was ignorant of scholarly work in that direction. T. Lamb