Matija Čop

Matija Čop (; 26 January 1797 – 6 July 1835), also known in German as Matthias Tschop, was a Slovene linguist, polyglot, literary historian and critic.

Biography Čop was born in the small northern Carniolan town of Žirovnica, in what was then the Habsburg monarchy (now in Slovenia), into a relatively wealthy peasant family. He was sent to Ljubljana for primary and secondary schooling and then studied philosophy at the lyceums of Ljubljana and Vienna

Influence With his command of 19 languages (including Albanian), Čop was perhaps the most erudite Slovene of his time. Although he did not publish much original work during his lifetime, Čop had a great influence on the later development of Slovene culture. Unlike such contemporaries as the linguist Jernej Kopitar and the poet Stanko Vraz, Čop believed in the possibility of the development of a distinctive Slovenian national culture. He can thus be seen as the predecessor of the Slovenian national awakening in the second part of the 19th century. His broad cosmopolitan education enabled him to recognise the poetic talent of France Prešeren, which remained unnoticed by most of his contemporaries, and to advise him on stylistic and linguistic issues.

Today, Čop is generally regarded as one of the most important Slovenian intellectuals of the 19th century. Several streets, schools and other institutions throughout Slovenia bear his name, among them the fashionable Čop Street in Ljubljana.