In 1810, Sava Mrkalj presented a project to reform Serbian orthography, previously based on the spelling of the Church Slavonic language, in his treatise "Salo debeloga jera libo azbukoprotres". The work then inspired numerous linguists, including Vuk Karadžić who based his own model of a new Serbian orthography mainly on the treatise. Mrkalj’s project draws on earlier concepts by European grammarians such as Antoine Arnauld, Claude Lancelot and, above all, Johann Christoph Adelung, author of the “write as you speak” principle; however, Mrkalj does not merely repeat the theses of his predecessors – rather, he develops them in a creative way and finds new logical justifications. Contemporary Serbian orthography, based on the foundations laid by Mrkalj, is informed by developments of European linguistic thought, and constitutes one of the few examples of actual phonetic spelling.
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