250th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bernolák

€10 silver collector coin

Anton Bernolák (3 October 1762 – 15 January 1813) is one of the most notable figures in Slovak history and was a leading personality of Slovak national life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was a Catholic priest and prominent linguist who became the first person to codify the Slovak language. In addition, he was an active promoter of Slovak national life and education.

His linguistic works cover all aspects of the Slovak language, and in Dissertatio philologico-critica de literis Slavorum (Philological-critical dissertation on Slovak letters), published in 1787, he made the case for having a single codified Slovak language. In an addendum to that work, entitled Orthographia, he set out the first unified principles of Slovak orthography, and in the book Grammatica Slavica (1790) he describes the grammatical structure of Slovak. His scientific description of the Slovak language was completed with Etymologia vocum Slavicarum (1791), which focused on etymological aspects of the language.