Josef Jungmann

Beginning in 1799, he started teaching at the local high school ("Gymnasium") in Litoměřice (Leitmeritz), which had a German majority at that time.

In 1815, he moved to Prague, where he worked until 1845 in the Old Town Academic Grammar School as a Czech professor.

His translation of Paradise Lost by Milton was called by Derek Sayer "the cornerstone"[1] of the modern literary Czech language.

In following years, he published a series of polemic texts, most notably the "Talks on Czech Language".

In order to achieve the stylistic range of vocabulary he desired, for poetic effect, and in order to expand the lexical resources of Czech, Jungmann revived archaic words, for which he studied historical documents, or borrowed from other Slavic languages, and created neologisms.

Josef Jungmann