Ladan Tomislav: Etymologicon

Tomislav Ladan: Etymologicon: the interpreter of various terms

The interpreter of various terms" by our famous linguist Tomislav Ladan can undoubtedly be read as a novel. Through anecdotes, the author talks about the etymology of different words, about the role of certain words from the animal, plant and human (physical and spiritual) world in religion, folklore, symbolism and mythology, then in which proverbs and sayings "Etymologicon" is divided into three basic parts: Animals, Plants and Humans. Prof. Dr. August Kovačec, who wrote the foreword to "Etymologicon", says that it is based on fact weaves the story, and considers indisputable facts from various cultural points of view: mythological, religious, folklore, sociological. "Knowledge of ancient and contemporary living languages, excellent knowledge of mythologies and cultural history, and various literary texts, encyclopedic knowledge of various 'non-philological' (especially natural science and technical) professions enabled Ladan to discover interesting history and the turbulent unfolding of life behind the cold objective facts... could write, it is necessary to have a very wide range of reliable knowledge from diverse fields, and this is given only to tireless researchers of the world that surrounds us... Ladan is one of the very few people who possess all the necessary qualifications and qualities to write such texts, with the guarantee that the texts will simultaneously provide precise professional/scientific information and capture the reader's attention." historians, sociologists, but also those who want to deepen their knowledge of the origin of terms from professional terminology. *** Tomislav Ladan was born in Ivanjica in 1932, spent his childhood years in Bosnia (Travnik, Bugojno, Sarajevo). At the personal invitation of Miroslav Krleža, he came to Zagreb in 1961 Lexikographic Institute, where he was the editor-in-chief of the "Osmoječný encyclopedia" since 2001. After his initial poems and feuilletons, he published reviews, essays and prose: from the book "Zoon graphicon" (1962) to the novel "Bosnian Coat of Arms" (1990). books from Latin and Greek and from Germanic languages (from English, German, Swedish and Norwegian). From Latin he translated Augustine's main work "On the State of God" and F. Petrić's "New Universal Philosophy". Ladan's greatest translation effort is the translation of Aristotle's main works ("Metaphysics", "Physics", "Nicomachean Ethics" and "Politics"), which is accompanied by an interpreter of the fundamentals terms, exemplified in ancient Greek and modern Greek, Latin, English, French, German and Russian. In the field of studying Croatian and foreign languages, he publishes the book "Words" (2000) in the form of various etymological essays, created on the basis of texts written for television shows.