(Plovdiv University Press "Paisii Hilendarski", 2024) Ivanova, Diana
The purpose of this article is to analyse Anton Nikopit’s idiolect in his translation of the first part of the four-volume Μαθήματα διὰ τοὺς Παίδας (Les-sons for Children) (1850), an encyclopaedia written by Kōnstantinos Vardalachos, an eminent scholar of the Modern Greek Enlightenment. The impressive size of Nikopit’s textbook (359 pages) pertains to the didactic discourse in the context of the Bulgarian linguistic situation in the 1850s. The focus of the study is the linguistic features of the translator’s idiolect with the aim to widen our understanding of the process of standardization of the language and the gradual solidification of the New Bulgarian trend of language codification. The study points out Nikopit’s contribution to the standardization of the New Bulgarian literary language, clarifies the character of his idiolect, and his achievement in introducing several grammatical norms as well as his approach to modernizing the writing norms. It underlines the practical use of the textbook regarding the European methods at that time and their practical application in children’s education. They entered Bulgarian schools via the Greek didactic literature.