The thing that impresses me about this is that this was achieved intentionally, possibly spearheaded by Vuk Karadžić [1] and continued by others [2] - at least

The thing that impresses me about this is that this was achieved intentionally, possibly spearheaded by Vuk Karadžić [1] and continued by others [2] - at least that's what they drilled us on in grade school back home. When we had a choice to write down English (or any foreign) words we could write it down in source form or "po Vuku" - "by the Wolf" - where we would write down the sounds in the pronounced word. It was almost like writing in the international phonetic alphabet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Vukovians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Vukovians