[7] Karadžić was born to Serbian parents Stefan and Jegda (née Zrnić) in the village of Tršić, near Loznica, which was at the time in the Ottoman Empire.

[8] Karadžić was fortunate to be a relative of Jevta Savić Čotrić, the only literate person in the area at the time, who taught him how to read and write.

After unsuccessful attempts to enroll in the gymnasium at Sremski Karlovci,[9] for which 19-year-old Karadžić was too old,[10] he left for Petrinja where he spent a few months learning Latin and German.

Disappointed, Karadžić left for Jadar and began working as a scribe for Jakov Nenadović and sometime later for Jevta Savić Čotrić as a customs officer all during the time of the War of Independence (1804-1813).

It was rumored that Karadžić deliberately refused to undergo amputation, instead deciding to make do with a prosthetic wooden pegleg, of which there were several sarcastic references in some of his works.

[clarification needed] Karadžić returned to Serbia by 1810, and as unfit for military service, he served as the secretary for commanders Ćurčija and Hajduk-Veljko.

With the Ottoman defeat of the Serbian rebels in 1813, he left for Vienna and later met Jernej Kopitar, an experienced linguist with a strong interest in secular Slavistics.

In 1824, he sent a copy of his folksong collection to Jacob Grimm, who was enthralled particularly by The Building of Skadar which Karadžić recorded from singing of Old Rashko.

The founders of the Romantic School in France, Charles Nodier, Prosper Mérimée, Lamartine, Gerard de Nerval, and Claude Fauriel translated a goodly number of them, and they also attracted the attention of Russian Alexander Pushkin, Finnish national poet Johan Ludwig Runeberg, Czech Samuel Roznay, Pole Kazimierz Brodzinski, English writers Walter Scott, Owen Meredith, and John Bowring, among others.

From then on, Vrčević became Karadžić's faithful and loyal collaborator who collected folk songs and tales and sent them to his address in Vienna for many years to come.

Prince Miloš was to resent Njegoš's abandonment of the hard sign, over which, at that time, furious intellectual battles were being waged, with ecclesiastical hierarchy involved as well.

[19] During the latter part of the eighteenth- and the beginning of the nineteenth century, most nations in Western and Eastern Europe underwent a period of language reforms with Germany's Johann Christoph Gottsched and Johann Christoph Adelung, Norway's Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Ivar Aasen, and Knud Knudson, Sweden's Carl Gustaf af Leopold, Italy's Alessandro Manzoni, Spain's Andrés Bello, Greece's Adamantios Korais, Russia's Yakov Grot and others.

Despite the Vienna agreement, the Serbs had by this time developed an Ekavian pronunciation, which was the native speech of their two cultural capitals as well as the great majority of the Serbian population.

[23] Karadžić held the view that all South Slavs that speak the Shtokavian dialect were Serbs or of Serbian origin, and considered all of them to speak the Serbian language (for consequences of such idea see Greater Serbia#Vuk Karadžić's Pan-Serbism), which was by then and still is today disputed by linguists and historians (see Ethnic affiliation of native speakers of Shtokavian dialect).

He collected several volumes of folk prose and poetry, including a book of over 100 lyrical and epic songs learned as a child and written down from memory.

[29] In some cases Karadžić hid the fact that he had not only collected folk poetry by recording the oral literature but transcribed it from manuscript songbooks of other collectors from Syrmia.

[31][32] He mostly published oral songs, with special reference to the heroic deeds of Prince Marko and the Kosovo Battle-related events, just like the singers sang without changes or additions.

[33] Karadžić collected most of the poems about Prince Lazar near the monasteries on Fruška Gora, mostly because the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church was moved there after the Great Migrations of the Serbs.

[34] Besides his greatest achievement on literary field, Karadžić gave his contribution to Serbian anthropology in combination with the ethnography of that time.

He gave, among other things, his own interpretation of the connection between environment and inhabitants, with parts on nourishment, living conditions, hygiene, diseases and funeral customs.

Literary historian Jovan Deretić summarized his work as "During his fifty years of tireless activity, he accomplished as much as an entire academy of sciences.

[39] Vukov Sabor cultural event was established in Tršić on the day of the opening of the renovated birth house of Vuk Karadžić, September 17, 1933.

[45] Translations: Write as you speak and read as it is written.Although the above quotation is often attributed to Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in Serbia, it is in fact an orthographic principle devised by the German grammarian and philologist Johann Christoph Adelung.