Krelj was born in
Vipava, then part of the
Duchy of Carniola. He studied at
University of Jena and became a follower of the
Lutheran preacher and writer
Primož Trubar, the leader of the
Protestant Reformation in the
Slovene Lands, whom he assisted as a preacher in
Ljubljana. In 1565, he became
superintendent of the Carniolan Protestant Church in Ljubljana. Already at the time of assuming the position, he was suffering from
tuberculosis and on Christmas two years later died from it, leaving behind a widow and a child. Krelj had a wide linguistic and philologic knowledge: besides
Slovene,
German and
Latin, he knew
Ancient Greek,
Hebrew,
Croatian and
Glagolitic literature. Krelj put the central dialect into context of dialects spoken by
Istrians, the inhabitants of the
Vipava Valley and
Lower Carniolans. He introduced some changes to the Latin script originally adopted by Trubar from the German. He consistently differentiated the phonemes /s/ /z/ /t͡s/ /ʃ/ /ʒ/ /t͡ʃ/ /t͡ɕ/ /ə/ (written by Krelj as '
, modern orthography '). His reforms were taken up by
Jurij Dalmatin in the first translation of the entire Bible to the Slovene. In 1583, they were codified by
Adam Bohorič in his grammar book . ==References==