Šulek supported linguistic principles of the
Zagreb Philological School and promoted
Croatian linguistic purism. For his work he has been described as the "father of Croatian scientific terminology". He liberally coined
neologisms and borrowed words from other
Slavic languages to serve as replacements for non-Slavic
loanwords. When a
Shtokavian word for a loanword was not available, he drew upon
Chakavian and
Kajkavian lexical stock, and when those were insufficient he borrowed words from other Slavic languages such as
Czech,
Slovak,
Russian and
Slovene, or proposed his own neologisms. His activities often drew him to conflict with
Croatian Vukovians who advocated pure folk language and derisively called his neologisms and borrowings
šulekizmi ("Šulekisms"). Despite their initial unpopularity, most of Šulek's new vocabulary slowly entered into common parlance of Croatian upper classes throughout the 20th century; many of these words are nowadays considered standard Croatian expressions for various concepts. Most of his coinages used in modern Croatian include words in
chemistry (
kisik "oxygen",
vodik "hydrogen",
dušik "nitrogen") and other technical fields (
plin "gas",
plinomjer "gas meter",
narječje "dialect",
glazba "music",
skladba "composition",
obrazac "template; form",
sustav "system",
tlak "pressure",
tlakomjer "
barometer",
zemljovid "map",
uzor "role model",
pojam "concept",
tvrtka "company",
uradak "piece of work",
zdravstvo "healthcare"). ==Works==