Henry Leeming 
London 
Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 
Članek obravnava prispevek Žige Popoviča in Marka Pohlina k primerjalnemu jezikoslovju. Prika-
zuje etimološka načela in prakso, kot se izkazujejo v njunih delih. 
The article conciders the contribution to comparative philology of Žiga Popovič and Marko Pohlin, 
it examines the etymological principles and practice revealed in their work. 
The contribution to Slavonic studies of the eighteenth -century predecessors of 
Kopitar and Miklošič tends to be overlooked, and this is understandable, given the 
limited horizon and the distorted perspectives of their period. The study of Sanskrit 
had not revealed to them the affinities of the Indo-European language family; the 
methodology of comparative and historical grammar had not as yet been formulated 
and developed. None the less, in spite of these handicaps, significant advances were 
made by Žiga Popovič and Marko Pohlin, whom we might dub the Daedalus and 
Icarus of Slovene etymology. The former collected materials for an etymological dic-
tionary; the latter made use of these in compiling his Glossarium Slavicum, Vienna, 
1792, published as a supplement to his trilingual Slovene-German -Latin dictionary, 
Tu malu besedishe treh jezikov, Ljubljana, 1782. 
From the early eighteenth century the importance of the Slavonic languages 
for comparative philology attracted growing recognition. Leibniz published parallel 
texts in Church Slavonic, Serbo-Croat, Slovene, Czech, Polish and Russian supplied 
by the Swedish lexicographer, J. G. Sparwenfeld, and an account of Llineburg Wend-
ish by G. F. Mithof, with etymological notes on words occurring in the Wendish 
Our Father.! J. G. Wachter's Glossarium germanicum, Leipzig, 1727 (first) and 1737 
(second edition), made use of Slavonic material from Hieronymus Megiser, 
Thesaurus polyglottus, Frankfurt am Main, 1603, and Abraham Frencelius [Fren-
zel], De originibus linguae sorabicae, Budyšin, 1693. For Wachter etymology was a 
noble quest, enhancing those gifts of reason and language which raise man above 
the be ast s and enabling him to understand the true meaning of the words he utters; 
false etymologies based on mistaken affinities were a waste of time. The Slovene 
pioneers joined the quest with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, lacking the systematic 
guidelines of historical and comparative grammar , they were unable to distinguish 
valid from spurious phonetic and semantic alignments. 
Janez Žiga Valentin Popovič (1705-1774),2 third and youngest son of Anton 
Popovič, manager of an estate at Arclin, near Celje in Lower Styria, rose by his 
1 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Collectanea etymologica, Hannover, 1717, 335-360. 
2 Biographical data are drawn from: Anton Slodnjak (ed.), Pisma Matija Čopa, vol. II, Ljub-
ljana, 1986; Fortsetzung und Erganzungen zu Christian Gottlieb lochers allgemeinem Gelehrten-
Lexikon, vol. VI, Bremen, 1819, 641-642; Biographie universelle, nouvelle edition, vol. XXXIV, Pa-
92 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 3 (2001) 
own efforts to the eminence of a chair in German at the University of Vienna as 
the foremost authority in Austria on the subject. His schooling by the Jesuits in 
Graz from the age of ten to twenty three embraced philosophy (1721-24?) and 
theo10gy (1724-28?) but did not 1ead to ordination. Tradition has imputed this to 
an inabi1ity to take wine but Kidrič suggests that the Jesuit school had stifled any 
urge in that direction. He spent three years travelling in Italy (1728-31), visiting 
Naples, Apulia, Sicily and Malta. On his return to Austria he worked for several 
years as a private tutor. Having failed to secure material support for his scientific 
researches in geography and natural history he was eventually forced to accept a 
post as history teacher at a newly established school for young gent1emen at the 
Benedictine abbey of Kremsmlinster. There he remained from 1744 to spring, 
17 47, devoting the latter part of his stay to the study of fungi, a truly scholastic 
response to the appearance of lichens on the cei1ing and mould on his belongings 
in the dark cellar which was his lodging. In the spring of 1747 he left for Ger-
many, staying in Regensburg tiH the autumn of 1749, in Nuremberg for the first 
months of 1750, and in Leipzig from early 1750 till autumn, 1753. Here his schol-
arly talents were recognised and encouraged. These were amply deployed in his 
first published book entit1ed Untersuchungen vom Meere, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 
1750, a wide-ranging investigation into questions of natural history, ethnography, 
economy, and philology. In 1753 he was invited to take over the recent1y estab-
lished chair of German language and rhetoric at the University of Vienna and 
remained in this post till his retirement in 1766 and withdrawal to a property he 
purchased outside Vienna, south of the Danube, where he devoted the last eight 
years of his life to viticulture, which left him three months of the year for his 
books. According to Pohlin: "supra sepulcrum lapidem vulgarem sibi poni jussit 
cum simplici Illyrica littera" - 'he ordered an ordinary stone to be placed on his 
grave with the simple Illyrian writing'. As the gravestone does not survive, this 
may mean no more than the use of one of his own character s for the final letter 
of his name. He left his savings to fund scholarships for poor students from 
Styria. 
Popovič was a scholar of unusually wide horizons. His early training had given 
him ataste for classical archeology and topography. These were his main preoccup-
ations when he toured Italy in his twenties. His interest in natural history developed 
later; we are told that he was thirty years of age before he heard from an apothec-
ary the word 'botany'. For present purposes we need not concern ourselves with the 
substantial works on the German language published during his days as a professor 
at the University of Vienna. However, before proceeding to an account of the mater-
ials he collected for an etymological dictionary, we may examine some of his ideas 
on the subject, as expressed in Untersuchungen vom Meere. Here Popovič puts for-
ward his ambitious plans for a complete survey of the South Slavonic dialects, di s-
cusses in great detail the origins of various place-names and geographical terms 
and, furthermore, delivers a scathing attack on the orthographical shortcomings of 
various European languages, questioning the value of the Roman legacy and attrib-
ris-Leipzig, sine anno, 100; Alfonz Gspan, "Razsvetljenstvo", in Zgodovina slovenskega slovstva, 
vol. 1, Ljubljana, 1956, 352-353; and the exhaustive and thoroughly researched article by France 
Kidrič in Slovenski biografski leksikon, vol. II, Ljubljana, 1933-52, 443-455. 
H. Leeming, Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 93 
uting the seeds of confusion to the Latin adaptation of the Greek alphabet. One of 
his particular targets was the misuse of what we might call the 'rogue letter' h, 
which marked palatalisation and assibilation in German but the absence thereof in 
Italian. He contrasted the sound practice of Slavonic, which like Hebrew employed a 
single character, where German used three (seh) or four (tseh). He perceived and in-
dicated other problems, such as the varying phonetic value of the digraph eh in 
German, Italian and Welsh, and the inability of Italian to transcribe satisfactorily 
such names as Gleditseh or Seheuehzer. 
In the section of his book addressed to the members of the Nuremberg 
cosmographical society he strongly argues for recognition of the importance of 
the Slavonic languages: Slavonic and Wendish are spoken in a large part of 
Europe.3 Maps of these areas are wildly inaccurate; their inhabitants have been 
more concerned with war than applying themselves to scientific pursuits. Here 
geographers and writers on natural history will find, as it were, a new world, 
whose description will enable them to correct many false impressions which have 
been engrained in our thinking; they will make new discoveries and win great 
renown. 
Given time and opportunity Popovič himself would gladly undertake re-
search in that part of Europe which stretches from Austria to the Black Sea on 
the one hand and the Adriatic Gulf on the other. Nothing would please him 
more than to be able to travel with an assistant, if some rich benefactor could 
subsidize such annual expeditions. First, however, in order to make a deeper as-
sessment of the languages and dialects he would encounter, he should acquire a 
knowledge of Arabic, ignorance of which had up till now been a constant 
stumbling block in his etymological researches. With that innate talent of the 
Slavs and Wends for the speedy acquisition of fluency in foreign languages, and 
with his knowledge of Hebrew to help him, he expected to take no more than 
half a year over this task. Then he would tour the regions mentioned with the 
primary aim of research into the spoken Slavonic dialects, while also pursuing 
investigation s into Roman, Greek and Slavonic antiquities and collecting infor-
mation about the local flora and fauna and other aspects of natural history. For 
the purposes of Slavonic philology he would wish to make a longer stay in 
Bosnia than elsewhere, for he himself had found that the experts we re right to 
consider Bosnian the purest, sweetest and most graceful of all the Slavonic and 
Wendish dialects, just as on the other hand Bulgarian is the coarsest. The eleg-
ance and charm of Bosnian and Serbian pronunciation compared with the boor-
ishness of Bulgarian recalled the similar contrast between Anglo-Saxon and 
Gothic. Among the Slavonic dialects Bosnian had the same status as Attic in 
Ancient Greek. 
In order to carry out his researches into Slavonic philology Popovič would fur-
thermore appreciate the help of a kind patron, who would order the casting of 
certain characters to supplement the Latin alphabet, which in itself was inadequate 
3 Untersuchungen, xvi-xvii; it is in this appeal (pp. i-lxxvi) and in his review of Christian 
Gottlieb Schwarz, De columnis Herculis (pp. 1-38) that Popovič expresses the ideas commented on 
in this article. Most of the work is devoted to problem s of oceanography. 
94 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 3 (2001) 
for the orthography of the modern European languages.4 He argues for innovation 
in a lengthy polemic on the shortcomings of the German alphabet, which he charac-
terises as a slavish imitation of Latin.5 
Some idea of the possible scope and method of his etymological research may 
be gleaned from his treatment of the origin of the name Cadiz, from Punic Ga'dir 
'fence,.6 A connection between the Punic word, Hebrew gadar 'be fenced', Greek 
xopWC;, Gothic gards, German garten and Icelandic gard had already been proposed 
by Wachter, who furthermore brought Slavonic cognates into the discussion.7 How-
ever, Popovič's treatment is much fuller. He points out that Dunum, Gard and Grad 
in Celtic, German and Slavonic place-names have the same meaning as Punic Gadir 
- a fence or a place enclosed by a fence, as Pliny, Solinus and Festus Avienus testi-
fy. Gard and grad come from a verb meaning 'to fence' , either Wendish gradim or 
Hebrew gadar. Anglo-Saxon tun, Scandinavian gard, Slavonic grad likewise mean 'a 
fence' or 'an enclosed place' such as a garden, park, house, palace or even a city. As 
the second element in place-names Popovič notes Augustodunum, Carrodunum, Lug-
dunum; Stutgard, Belgard and Stargard . Zarigrad , which means 'Kaiserstadt', is a 
name given to Constantinople by the Slavonic peoples; according to Wachter it is a 
name used by Slavonic-speaking European Turks. Mycklegard, the Scandinavian 
name for the city employs a root meaning 'great', related to Greek IlEyac;, w;yaA8Ioc;. 
Asimilar name is Mecklenburg, in Latin Megalopolis , once a large city with pre-
tensions to be considered a Northern Constantinople. Novigrad , a name for some 
cast1es and towns in lands where Slavonic is spoken, in Dalmatia, Croatia and Hun-
gary, corresponds to German Neustadt, Neuschloss and Latin Neapolis. Belgrad in 
Serbia has a Slavonic name, corresponding to German Weissenburg, Latin Alba and 
Hungarian FejerV(ir (for Fehervar H. L.). Not far from Or~ova on the left bank of 
the Danube is a place called in Serbian Zernigrad and in modern Greek Mauron 
Kastron, or in the vernacular Mauro Kastro according to information received from 
an old Macedonian merchant. Not far away is the town of Tschernez, whose name 
may be connected. 
On the use of grad or gard as the second component of place-names Popovič 
refers his readers to the second article on Gard in Wachter's Glossarium Germani-
cum.8 However, while Wachter had presented the Slavonic variants in an unsatisfac-
tory manner as Russian gorod or grod, and Sorbian and other grad or gard, Popov-
ič correct1y differentiates Polish grod from Russian gorod "mit einer Epenthesis". 
Sorbian, Bohemian and Moravian, dubbed by him 'the aspirating dialects' (die hau-
chenden Mundarten), in their disagreeable way9 substitute h for g, giving Lusatian 
Sorbian hrod, based on Polish grod. Bohemian and Moravian with their ill-sounding 
guttural manner of speech 10 produce hrad instead of the correct Slavonic grad. po-
povič gives examples of these variants in place-names from Bohemia, Moravia, PO-
land and Russia with geographical and etymological comments and foreign equival-
4Ibidem, xviii. 
5Ibidem, xviii-xxi. 
6Ibidem, 27-29. 
7 J. G. Wachter, Glossarium germanicum, Leipzig, 1727, 146. 
8Ibidem. 
9 "nach ihrer unangenehmen Wei fe." 
10 "nach ihrer ubellautenden, und aus dem Halle weggehauchten Sprechart." 
H. Leeming, Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 95 
ents: Bohemian Wischihrad, Moravian Welehrad and Hradisch, Polish Grodeck, Rus-
sian [!] Nowogrodeck. For the meaning of Russian Bielogorod, Donkagorod, Mi-
chailogorod, Mirogorod, Novogorod , Wasilogorod and others the reader is referred 
to Abraham Frenzel's above-mentioned work on the origins of the Sorbian language. 
The suffix -iz or -itsch in German toponyms is explained as an adaptation of 
the Slavonic -ica, a sure sign that the locality once had a Slavonic population. l1 
Leibniz is from the Slavonic Lipnica, and means 'Lindenstadt'; Bistrica, a name 
frequently met in Styria and Carniola, is a derivative of bistro 'shallow' , which 
assumes various forms in German: Bistriz, Wistriz, Weistriz, Veistriz, Feistriz. 
There is a town near Celje called by the Germans Windisch Feistriz to distinguish 
it from two other castles called Feistriz in Styria, arelic of the days when the 
whole area around Graz belonged to the Slavs before they were driven back across 
the Drava under Bavarian pressure. Popovič himself knows from documentary 
evidence of fifty occurrences of the word referring to small streams in Styria and 
Carniola. 
The claims of Slavonic to be admitted as comparative material for the early 
history of related languages are emphatically stated in the article on Polish woye-
wodstwo.12 This is explained as a derivative of woyewoda, itself a compound cor-
responding literally to Latin bellidux or German Heerjuhrer. The first element of 
the compound noun is woj, adialectal variant of boj 'militia, bellum'; the second 
is seen in the verbal root wod- which has arisen by a weaker pronunciation of the 
original aspirate, a disagreeable feature of certain Slavonic dialects including Lus-
atian.13 The earlier form is seen in Ancient Greek hod os, so that the verb wodim 
is related to a Greek hodein. Modern convention would have enabled Popovič to 
present this as astarred form. Instead, he goes on to explain his apparent sole-
cism. "1 have to say this, because my gentle readers are probably stilI not con-
vinced of the antiquity of the Wendish language. When they become aware that 
root-words lost in Greek survive in Wendish, and that the Greeks themselves must 
refer to Wendish in order to find the explanation of some of their own words, my 
derivation of Greek hodos from what is now Wendish but was probably once 
Japhetic hod or chod 'iter' will sound alittie less incredible". He goes on to pro-
pose a Slavonic origin for the name of the god Woden, from wodim 'duco' , for as 
dux itineris he was the equivalent of Mercurius hodegos , hence the name of the 
third day of the week in English and Dutch. Such a simple answer had evaded 
scholars who had been racking their brains for a solution in ignorance of the 
Wendish evidence. 
The materials gathered by Popovič for an etymological dictionary of Slovene 
are now held by the National and University Library (Narodna in univerzitetna 
knjižnica), Ljubljana, under shelf-mark MS 423. They consist of four hundred and 
eighty cards measuring 11.5 by 8.5 centimetres. Notes from the librarians explain 
that the cards were alphabetically arranged and numbered by Janez Logar and de-
scribe the item as: "Popovič Prof. Beitrag zum slovenischen W6rterbuch Vodniks". 
11 Untersuchungen, lxiii-lxv. 
12Ibidem, lxviii-lxix. 
13 "eine Verwandelung des Hauches in eine weichere Ausfprache (deren unmaffiger Gebrauch 
bei einigen Wendifchen V61kern, als bei den Laufizern, ein HaBlicher Idiotifmus wird)." 
96 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 3 (2001) 
This erroneous descriptionl4 probably aro se by a misunderstanding of information 
given on the first card (no. 1 recto).15 This no doubt once served as a marker in PO-
povič's card index. It bears the capital letter s MNO P in the author's own hand. 
On the same card is a note by Valentin Vodnik, decribing how the material came 
into his hands from Modest Schrey,16 who had himself received it from Marko Poh-
lin. 
In scholarly literature the work is now referred to as Specimen vocabularii 
Vindo-Carniolici, a tit1e first met in Pohlin's bibliography of Slovene literature, Bi-
bliotheca Carnioliae. It is interesting that Matija Čop in his essay Literatura der 
Winden does not seem to identify Popovič's etymological notes with the Specimen. 
While registering this as the tit1e of one of five works left in manuscript, he lam-
ents in alater paragraph the loss of the various grammatical notes which had been 
in the possession of Vodnik.17 
The materials for what would have been the first etymological dictionary of a 
Slavonic language consist of short artides mostly confined to a single page of from 
one to twelve lines, but occasionally extending overleaf and sometimes running on 
to a second or even third card. The comments are partly in Latin, partly in Ger-
man. The Gothic script employed for the Germanic material and the German expos-
itory text poses difficulties for those unfamiliar with this hand. Greek, Latin and 
Hebrew words are dearly written, as are most examples quoted from other lan-
guages. In his spelling of Slovene words Popovič was able to put into practice his 
proposed orthographic reforms, thus anticipating most of the changes introduced by 
Metelko.ls He removed four of the digraphs of the Bohorič aphabet, namely nj, Jh, 
sh, zh; dropped another entirely: lj; employed special shapes for the letter s h, s, v; 
carefully distinguished two forms of z. Reduced vowels are underlined: l!:., ~; accents 
are used to indicate dose e: e, and open o: o. He even used his new characters to 
show the pronunciation of Hungarian kis asszony: kilI1a(50ii (269 v.). The following 
table presents the relevant letters in the alphabets of Bohorič, Popovič, Metelko and 
modern Slovene. 
Bohorič Popovič Metelko Modern Slovene 
e e € e 
h X h h 
i, u, e e 2 e 
lj 1 1 lj 
nj ii il nj 
o 6 <Il 6 
f IS S s 
fh III ul Š 
14 "Beitrag" gives a misleading impression; Popovič's materials were a source for Vodnik but 
not a contribution from their author, with whom Vodnik had no contact. 
15 References henceforth will be by card number only. 
16 In Slovene orthography Šraj, (1754-1821) Augustinian monk, later parish priest, biblical 
translator. 
17 A. Slodnjak (ed.), Pisma Matija Čopa, vol. II, Ljubljana, 1986, 85. 
18 F. Metelko, Lehrgebiiude der slowenischen Sprache im K6nigreiche Illyrien und in den be-
nachbarten Provinzen, Ljubljana, 1825. 
H. Leeming, Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 97 
Bohorič Popovič Metelko Modern Slovene 
s z z z 
sh III x Ž 
V W v v 
z 3 11 c 
zh cu LI č 
Like most scholars of his era Popovič knew the classical languages and Heb-
rew; these were central in his studies and thought. Because of the special respect 
and regard in which they were held any chance resemblance between a Slavonic 
word and Latin, Greek or Hebrew was gladly interpreted as a genetic relationship. 
This hankering after ancient roots still persists in etymological circles and presuma -
bly will always be with us, since such distant affinities can help to bolster a nations 
self-respect. We can therefore pardon Popovič's errors in proposing Greek origins for 
da, dež, hlev, hrast, knez, letos; or Hebrew derivations for hom, jevša, jelen, letal, 
mol, ozirati, while our own dictionaries contain similar examples of etymological 
nostalgia, with Indo-European pedigrees lending a spurious respectability to loan-
words of a less noble origin. 
Principles of etymology implicit or explicit in Popovič's materials include ono-
matopoeia, seen in bUOfeila: "in Oberkrain apis, die Biene, von bucuit..." (39), or ja-
reb: "vox per onomatopoeiam efficta, perdix mas, fic enim conclamat gregem" (115); 
diachrony: "miza, menfa. Prior vox hac antiquior quia hrec epenthefi aucta" (230) -
an invalid example;19 and contradiction: breja 'pregnant' is associated with French 
brehaigne 'sterile' (29). Great ingenuity is shown in the provision of logical or com-
mon-sense explanations, for example the oak tree is called dob with the root of the 
adjective dobr because it was the good tree: "Bona arbor, quia primum victum dedit 
mortalibus." (45=46) The ultimate source is, appropriately, Hebrew tov 'good'. 
Several of his articles show that, within the limitations of his period, Popovič 
was capable of sound analysis, even though this may have occasionally led him to 
mistaken conclusions. His treatment of the names of the hoopoe in Slovene and 
Croat distinguish a primary and a secondary prothesis: "deb Croatis upupa, Wiede-
hopf, odab Carniolis per profthefin. <smerdi ka ku odab, foetet inftar upupre. wodeb 
Vindis per novam profthefin." (56). Morphological analysis is combined with valid 
comparative observation in the article on the verb najti 'to find'; "naidem, vox dif-
fyllaba, invenio, reperio; compofita ex particula na et idem, venio; avaA6yO)~ cum 
ftiriaco ankommen ejusdem fenfus. Etiam latini utuntur nj) incurrere in aliquem, 
pro obviare". (40) Finally, well before the formulation of Grimm's Law or the first 
Slavonic palatalisation Popovič managed to align Slavonic žena with a Germanic 
cognate; this had been anticipated by Wachter, who saw asimilar relationship for 
Sorbian žona?O 
19 Bučeila 'bee', here tagged as Upper Carniolan, is an archaic form, closer than standard Slo-
vene čebela to Common Slavonic *bočela; the connection with bučit (standard Slovene bučati 'to 
boom') is accepted by some etymologists. Jerab (standard jereb) 'partridge' is here said to have an 
onomatopeic name, based on the cock bird's cry, summoning his brood. The suggestion that Slo-
vene miza is older than Latin mensa, and that the epenthesis of n is a secondary development is 
in line with Popovič's ideas on the antiquity of Slavonic; however, the example is ili chosen. 
20 "Mulier Francis quena, Sorabis zana" in Glassarium germanicum (1737), Prolegomena, Sec-
tio III, ci ted as an example of the permutation of q and z. 
98 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 3 (2001) 
To sum up, Popovič did what he could to bring the Slavonic languages, in par-
ticular the Carniolan, Styrian and other dialects of Slovene with which he was fa-
miliar, into focus as congeners of the Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic siblings, 
whose relationships were already under scientific scrutiny. Even though he was stilI 
under the spell of classical and biblical cultural predominance, his suggested Greek 
and Hebrew cognates were kept in fairly reasonable bounds; there is no attempt to 
explain the whole of the Slavonic vocabulary as deriving from Hebrew. 
Marko Pohlin (1735-1801; baptismal name: Anton), son of aLjubijana innkeep-
er, after schooling at the Franciscan gymnasium in Novo mesto and the Jesuit col-
lege in Ljubljana, joined the order of the disca1ced Augustinians in which he re-
mained until the end of his life, working as preacher and teacher, rising to the rank 
of subprior at monasteries in Ljubljana, Maria-Brunn and Vienna, serving at one 
stage as secretary of his native province.21 Contact with Czech members of the order 
fostered in him that ambition to raise the dignity of his own language which gave 
him the leading role in the first stage of the Slovene cultural revival. From his vast 
output of devotional and educational literature, numbering over forty published 
books and around twenty which remained in manuscript, the most significant for 
our present purpose are his dictionaries and his grammar of Slovene, written in 
German for foreigners and for Slovenes educated with German as the language of 
instruction. In this work Pohlin insists that Slovene is as ancient and honourable as 
other civilised languages; it was once taught at court; it was earlier used in church 
services; it is spoken over a vast territory. 
Pohlin made use of Popovič's card index in compiling the etymological diction-
ary, to which, in apparent emulation of Wachter's Glossarium germanicum, he gave 
the title Glossarium slavicum, or more precisely , in the heading to his preface, Glos-
sarium slavico-carniolicum. In this preface Pohlin states his own attitude to the 
etymologist's quest.22 At the outset he disclaims any desire to prove that all other 
languages have derived or borrowed their vocabulary from Illyrian, or from Slavon-
ic, the later, more refined stage of that language. He would not follow the example 
of those numerous fierce champions of the integrity of their native tongue by assert-
ing that Carniolan had such a rich vocabulary that it had no need of alien plumage. 
He asks if there is any language on earth which could honestly claim that all its 
words were its own, neither related to nor shared with others, nor borrowed from 
them, the unique heritage of one single society. He is aware that some of the most 
learned scholars have taken it for granted that their own beloved language was the 
source of all others, relying on the prattie of so many chronographers, who strive to 
establish the close links of their nation with the patriarchs and other ancients. Ff. 
Marko declares that he intends to avoid such quicksands and whirlpools; he is not so 
much concerned with precise definitions of origin as with proclaiming the concord, 
affinity, mutuality and inter-relationships of languages. Original and genuine Slo-
vene words are frequently of Greek origin; on the other hand, as Popovič has 
shown, many words lost in Greek are of Illyrian origin. The most famous lexico-
graphers do not dispute the fact that their languages have borrowed many words from 
Illyrian. And this in no way belitt1es the worth and honour of any language. "Holy 
and sacred be the accord of the common, universal Race in all things righteous!" 
21 Biographical details are from Gspan, op. cit., 353-361 and Slodnjak, op. cit., 61-68. 
22 Glossarium slavicum (henceforth Glassarium), 3-6. 
H. Leeming, Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 99 
He goes on to present fifteen general rules of 'glossology', most of which are 
quite sound in principle. Rule I contains the valid point that materials from a wide 
range of languages may be legitimately quoted, since these demonstrate convergent 
tendencies (convenientia); presented in this way they are more easily stamped on the 
memory. Rule II acknowledges that full agreement is not necessary: anyone can see 
that Latin Vulcanus is from Tubalcain and antrum from Greek antron. Rule III em-
phasises the role of logic and reason in etymology and gives examples of derivation 
ex materia: homo 'man' from humus 'earth'; ab adjuncto: ales 'bird' from ala 'wing'; 
ex dissentaneis: lucus 'grove' , so-called quod minime luceat 'because it gives little 
light'. Rule IV acknowledges the importance of analogy, which helps us to realise 
that rostrum 'be ak' is from rodo 'gnaw'; rastrum 'hoe' from rado 'scratch'; Slovene 
šivanka 'needle' is from šivam 'sew'; by metathesis Latin forma comes from Greek 
morphe 'shape', and German kurz 'short' from Hebrew qlitsar 'curtail'. Rule V on 
the frequent permutability of vowels brings us to the threshold of the laws of Indo--
European vocalic gradation with examples from Slovene: pes 'dog', pasje 'doggish'; 
dolg 'long', dalej 'further'. Rule VI gives examples of the permutation of consonants 
which have the same point of articulation: Latin scribo, scripsi; Latin macer 'le an' , 
German mager 'id.'; Greek pous 'foot', German Fuj3 'id.'. The alignment of Slovene 
bos 'barefoot' with pes in Latin nudipes is unfortunate but without Vemer's Law Fr. 
Marko could not know that he had a cognate to hand in German barfuj3. Rule VII 
declares that the letters of the root are of essential importance compared with those 
others which are accidental or formative: in Latin pater pat is the essence, while 
suffixal ter, trem, tris, ernus are accidental. The accompanying etymology, deriving 
Greek pater from Hebrew 'lib by metathesis (lib to pa), though erroneous, is of in-
terest since it allots t to the suffix; in the Latin example this consonant is regarded 
as part of the root. Rule VIII gives examples of grammatical derivation which se em 
to consist in shedding an inflection: nominative kozl 'goat' from oblique kozla; mas-
culine lubil from feminine lubila; ženen 'married' from ženem '1 marry' seems to go 
counter to the stated principle deriving present from preterite. Rule IX perceives but 
misinterprets the relationship between initial h in Greek and s in Latin, deriving the 
latter from the former , e.g. sylva from hule 'wood'; Fr. Marko attempts without suc-
cess to apply the rule to Slovene. Rule X recognises the need to take dialectal vari-
ants into account. Rule XI concems aspiration which occurs before initial vowels as 
a result of emphasis or for ease of articulation; the example from Slovene: hovca for 
ovca 'sheep' is valid. 
Rule XII points out that the same word may have not only diverse but even 
contradictory meanings in various languages. Fr. Marko quotes the paradoxical 
Greek lObe 'contumely' against German Lobe 'praise', and the polysemic sus, in Lat-
in 'pig' but 'horse' in Hebrew and 'silence' in Dutch. He reports the theory that such 
confusion resu1ts from divine intervention at the building of the tower of Babel, 
without indicating whether he himself believe s this. Rule XIII tolerates the coexist-
ence of rival etymologies and admits that sometimes the same word may be derived 
with equal felicity from Greek, Hebrew, Latin, German and so on. Rule XIV states 
that the graphic evidence is of ten confirmed by meaning; his other examples are 
possible but the alignment of Slovene žito 'com' with Greek sitos 'bread' is invalid 
a1though semantically attractive. Rule XV counsels restraint: we should not strive 
with the Stoics to find a solution for every word. Finally, an etymological dictionary 
100 Slovenski jezik - Slovene Linguistic Studies 3 (2001) 
is not required to list all derivatives; it is enough to give the root words and omit 
such categories as composita, decomposita, comparatives, negatives, frequentatives, 
whose formation may be learnt with the aid of a grammar . 
Although Fr. Marko may have wished to submit to the discipline of these prin-
ciples, he had no means of checking the validity of derivational relationships based 
on the evidence of graphic or phonetic similarities. Forced to search for logical ex-
planations for the resultant alignments, he shows great ingenuity. In some associa-
tions we see etymology used to serve male suspicion and prejudice. "Žena ... ženen 
eiusdem sunt originis a verbo ženem, jam passive, jam active sumpta: Syr[iace] zena, 
fornicatus est" (Glossarium, 90): žena contains the same root as the present stem of 
gnati: ženem '1 chase'; she is caught as passive or active victim after the chase she 
may have herself provoked; the Syriac evidence stresses her carnal proclivities. Popo-
vič, on the other hand, aligns the word with Gothic kuni 'generation, tribe' and 
takes the underlying meaning to be 'the child-bearing sex': "žena, ist verwandt mit 
geno, is, ere, gebiihren, quasi pariens sexus. Das Gothische kun, generatio ... " (354). 
The association of dekle 'girI' and delo 'work' with Greek doule (Glossarium, 17) 
seems to assert the subservient role of woman in society; linguistically doulos 'male 
slave' would have served equally well as a cognate for delo. Or was Fr. Marko apply-
ing Rule VIII and the primacy of feminine forms? Hlepim '1 crave' is derived in ac-
cordance with Rule VI from hleb 'bread', "litera leni in asperam mutata" (Glossar-
ium, 32). The semantic development is explained as follows: "a certain kind of wo-
man craves the odour of freshly baked bread; hence the metaphorical sen se of hle-
pim". For his frivolous alter ego, aut hor of a collection of light-hearted riddles 
(Kratkočasne uganke, Ljubljana, 1788) Pater Markus chose the anagrammatical 
pseudonym, Peter Kumras. Perhaps Markus did not find it easy to bar Kumras from 
the scriptorium when his advice was inopportune. Although Pohlin has the reputa-
tion of an arrant egoist, the epigraph he chose for his Glossarium claims only mod-
est success in his etymological endeavours: 
"Qui legis ista, tuam reprehendo, si mea lauda s 
Omnia, stultitiam; si nihil? Invidiam." 
Prispelo aprila 2000, sprejeto oktobra 2000 
Received April 200, accepted October 2000 
Slovenska začetnika primerjalnega slovanskega jezikoslovja 
Žiga Popovič (1705-1774) je bil vsestranski učenjak in nenavadno nadarjen je-
zikoslovec. Eno težišč njegovega zanimanja je bilo primerjalno slovansko jezikoslov-
je, njegova neizpolnjena želja pa izdelati popoln pregled slovanskih narečij od Jad-
ranskega do Črnega morja. Zagovarjal je pomembnost slovanskega dokaznega gradi-
va pri primerjalnih in zgodovinskih študijah: v grščini pozabljena beseda je utegnila 
preživeti v slovanščini. To načelo je upravičeno, vendar so navedeni primeri delno 
dvomljivi. Popovič je zbiral gradivo za slovenski etimološki slovar in pri tem mimo-
grede uporabil nove črkovne znake, kar je privedlo do črkopisne reforme. Čeprav ga 
H. Leeming, Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 101 
je včasih zavedlo tradicionalno izvajanje grščine iz hebrejščine, se je izkazal za spo-
sobnega uporabiti jasna etimološka načela. 
Zaradi sklicevanja na glasovno podobnost in dopuščanja več različnih rešitev je 
večina etimoloških podatkov v Glossarium Slavicum Marka Pohlina (1735-1801) na-
pačna, čeprav ne nezanimiva, predvsem zaradi njegovih razumskih in celo moralizi-
rujočih teženj. Veliki učitelj sam priznava, da je v etimologiji šibek. 
Early Slovene Pioneers of Comparative Slavonic Philology 
Žiga Popovič (1705-1774) was a dedicated polymath and unusually gifted 
linguist, with a particular interest in comparative Slavonic philology, and an unful-
filled ambition to make a complete survey od Slavonic dialects from the Adriatic to 
the Black Sea. He insisted on the importance for comparative and historical studies 
of the Slavonic evidence: a word, lost in Greek, might survive in Slavonic. The prin-
ciple is sound, although the examples offered may be suspect. Popovič gathered ma-
terials for an etymological dictionary of Slovene, incidentally employing new char-
acters in what amounted to a reform of the alphabet. Although occasionally misled 
into traditional derivations from Greek of Hebrew, he showed himself capable of ap-
plying sound etymological principles. 
Suggested by phonetic resemblance and tolerant of multiple solutions, much of 
the etymological information in Marko Pohlin's (1735-1801) Glossarium Slavicum is 
invalid, though not without interest for its rationalising and even moralising tenden-
cies. The great pedagog ue himself admits his shortcomings as an etymologist.