X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Johann Christoph Adelung


Sava Mrkalj

It was in 1805 in Pest that he began to devote himself to philological researches, inspired by the works of German philologist Johann Christoph Adelung and others who were working on language reforms.

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić

Karadžić reformed the Serbian literary language and standardised the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet by following strict phonemic principles on the Johann Christoph Adelung' model and Jan Hus' Czech alphabet.

Although the above quotation is usually attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, it is in fact an orthographic principle devised by the German grammarian and philologist Johann Christoph Adelung.


ß

Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) and Johann Christian August Heyse (1764–1829) were two German lexicographers who tried to establish consistent rules on the application of the letter s.


see also

Pumpernickel

The philologist Johann Christoph Adelung states that the word has an origin in the Germanic vernacular where pumpern was a New High German synonym for being flatulent, and Nickel was a form of the name Nicholas, commonly associated with a goblin or devil (e.g. "Old Nick", a familiar name for Satan), or more generally for a malevolent spirit or demon.