Bernolak, Anton

Born: 03/10/1762 Slanica, Dolny Kubin region
Died: 15/01/1813 Nove Zamky

Anton Bernolak, born in Slanica (no longer a village as it was destroyed to make the Orava dam), belongs to one of the most important personalities of Slavonic enlightenment. Bernolak is known in Slovak history as the person who first codified the Slovak literary language.

Anton Bernolak studied in Ruzomberok, Bratislava, Trnava, and then studied theology in Vienna. A well educated man, Bernolak spoke several languages and had a broad knowledge of history, economics, medicine, nature studies, aesthetics, music and politics.

In 1790, Bernolak published a text-book of the first Slovak grammar, known as the "Grammatica Slavica", which was based on the Western Slovak dialect. The literary language was based on a phonetic system, "Write as you hear". To complete his codification of the literary Slovak language he also worked on the creation of a dictionary, known as the "Slovar slovenski cesko-latinsko-nemecko-uherski", which was published after his death thanks to Juraj Palkovic. This dictionary was to be the vocabulary manual of the literary language.

- Introduction

- Bernolak, Anton

- Caplovic, Vavrinec

- Radlinsky, Andrej

- Hattala, Martin

- Matuska, Janko

- Bohun, Peter

- Hviezdoslav, P.O.

- Kukucin, Martin

- Nadasi, Ladislav

- Florin, Theo

- Medvecka, Maria

- Vojtasak, Jan