Gaj's Latin alphabet
Alfabeto de Gaj
- Date
- 1835 · confidence medium
- Place
- Zagreb, Croatia
- Credited to
- Ljudevit Gaj
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
As part of the Illyrian movement, Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj designed a unified 30-letter Latin orthography, with diacritics inspired by Jan Hus's Czech alphabet, giving a one-to-one sound-to-letter match for writing the three Croat-populated regions and dialects of the Austrian Empire.
Gaj published the basis of the reform in Buda in 1830 and refined it until settling the final form around 1835-1836 in Zagreb, where he applied it in his newspaper Novine Horvatzke and its supplement Danica.
What it led to
- Standardization of Latin-script Serbo-Croatian writing
- Influence on Slovene and Macedonian orthographic reforms