Ivan Klajn (, ; 31 January 1937 31 March 2021) was a Serbian linguist, philologist and language historian, with primary interest in Romance languages and Serbian. He was a regular member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the editor-in-chief of the Matica srpska's journal Jezik danas.
Klajn was born in Belgrade to , a physician and psychoanalyst, whose Croatian-Jewish family had lived in Vukovar for generations, and , who was a pianist from a Serbian merchant family. During World War II, they were separated because his father went into hiding to avoid Nazi persecution, which claimed the lives of several of his sisters. They rejoined by the end of the war, and his father was later a theatre director. His mother was a musicologist who travelled to the US in the 1950s, and introduced Ivan to Ljubica Mariàwho would teach him music theory. His mother spoke French and his father spoke German, and he learned English from an interest in jazz. Klajn served his military service in Zagreb where he met his father's friend Miroslav Krleà ¾a.
He completed the studies of the Italian language and literature at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology. After graduation, he started working at the same faculty, becoming a regular professor of the Italian language and the comparative grammar of Romance languages. Beside Romance Studies, his interest also lies in the language morphology, linguistic consultancy and the standardization of the modern Serbian language. His major works are the ReÃÂnik jeziÃÂkih nedoumica ('The dictionary of linguistic dilemmas'), Tvorba reÃÂi u savremenom srpskom jeziku ('Morphology in modern Serbian language', 2 volumes) and Italijansko-srpski reÃÂnik ('Italian-Serbian dictionary').
In 2017, he signed the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.
Klajn died from COVID-19 on 31 March 2021, in Belgrade at the age of 84.
In 1974 he started writing weekly columns on the problems of modern Serbo-Croatian, first in Borba, and afterward in Politika and NIN.
He was the editor-in-chief of the linguistic journal Jezik danas ('Language today'), published by Matica srpska. He published a number of papers in linguistic journals, as well as 18 books:
In co-authorship with Pavle IviÃÂ, Mitar Peà ¡ikan and Branislav Brboriàhe wrote JeziÃÂki priruÃÂnik ('Language manual'), published by Radio Television Belgrade (1991). In the miscellany Srpski jezik na kraju veka ('Serbian language at the end of century') he wrote a part dealing with lexis. His ReÃÂnik jeziÃÂkih nedoumica ('The dictionary of language dilemmas') was reprinted in 6 editions. For his Italijansko-srpski reÃÂnik ('Italian-Serbian dictionary', 2nd edition, 2000), he received an award from the Italian government.
He translated a number of books from Italian and English. His translation of the Giordano Bruno's Il Candelaio ('The Torchbearer'; Serbian: SveÃÂar) was played at the Atelje 212 in Belgrade. He was one of the editors of the Serbian edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Languages (Nolit, Belgrade, 1995), and of the translators of the Serbian edition of the Encyclopedic dictionary of modern linguistics (Nolit, Belgrade, 1988).
He was a member of the Council of the Vukova zaduà ¾bina ('Vuk's endowment') and the Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language. He was a member and the contributor of Matica srpska.