Kopitar and J. Grimm on the Glagolita Clozianus

Abstract

The main component of Kopitar's correspondence to Jakob Grimm is the argummentation of his own hypotesis on the Pannonian origin of Cyril's and Methodius's Old Church Slavic liturgical (and general literary) language. Kopitar came to this conclusion based on 25 words that came to Old Church Slavic from West South Slavic, to be understood primarily as a predecessor of Slovene, which received them from West Germanic (precisely, from German), and not from Balkan East Germanic. Modern etymological research of this lexicon confirms Kopitar's inferences. Kopitar regretted that his view on the origin of Old Church Slavic were accepted neither by Chech, Slovenes, nor by Jakob Grimm.