Acta Baltko-Slavica, 33 SOW, Warszawa 2009 Danguolė Mikulėnienė The Institute of the Lithuanian Language Vilnius ON THE HISTORY OF LITHUANIAN ORTHOGRAPHY: TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS1 Modern Lithuanian alphabet has thirty-two letters. It is based on the Latin al­ phabet and was formed over several centuries (Fig. 1). The Lithuanian alphabet has not undergone any changes for over a hundred years. Fig. 1. Modern Lithuanian alphabet Aa Aą Bb Cc Čč Dd Ee Ęę Ėė Ff Gg Hh Ii Įj Yy Jj KkLIMmNnOoPpRrSsŠšTtUuŲųŪūVvZzŽž The Lithuanian alphabet as it is now was introduced by the famous Lithuanian lnguist Jonas Jablonskis (1901). "An alphabet with a lot of various diacritics above or elow words does not suit us; we would like our writing not to be so full of various s»gns", wrote the scholar [Jablonskis 1957: 179]. The letters that he introduced have stood the test of time. Since the beginning of the twentieth century only some mat­ ters of orthography have changed, as "our written language has not been worked out So well, spelling is so different, that so far it's difficult to write clear language laws, ft must be often mentioned that there are many fluctuating things in the grammars °f other languages although their orthography is much better worked out" [Jablons­ kis 1957: 60-61]. Traditions of Lithuanian writing and orthography formed in the cultural con­ text of European, especially neighbouring, nations over a long time. The article dis­ cusses only the most important characteristics of Lithuanian tradition. the article is based on the presentation at an international conference devoted to the 100,h anniver- SarV of Latvian orthography (Riga 2008). 46 Danguolė Mikulėnienė 1. Martynas Mažvydas introduced the first Lithuanian alphabet in his Katekiz­ mas (Catechismus) in 1547 (Fig. 2). Fig. 2. Martynas Mažvydas' alphabet in Katekizmas (1547)2 • -(bYgus tr trumpas moltf į SKA ITITINI V IRA n. \ ABCDBFQHIKLMHO? Q^R S T V X X Z* ! 0 t it v p y >. e e i 0 a y. StatfalfTiK* v. LoJ U< 16 « b f R f i m n p ą t 9 t p J. Although the orthography of the author of the first Lithuanian book was still very varied and inconsequent, attempts to keep to certain principles can be seen there [Palionis 2000: 60]. His alphabet consisted of twenty-three Gothic-type letters (23 upper case and 25 lower case letters). Besides them, however, Mazvydas also used additional letterings in his writing (see more [Palionis 2000:45]). 2 See also [Mažvydas 1993: 59]. On the history of Lithuanian orthography: traditions and innovations 47 Gothic-type letters created on the model of German letters are characteristic of Lithuanian books printed in East Prussia. There, the Gothic tradition survived until the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century (practically until World War I), although insertions and separate words in the Latin antiqua can be found m the earliest writing. The Latin letters with a streamlined shape prevailed in many Lithuanian books from the end of the eighteenth century. They were traditional otters of the writing in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. (For comparison, in Poland the Latin antiqua started dominating already at the end of the fifteenth century.) The marking of the corresponding sounds of the Lithuanian language is con­ nected with this, especially the writing in diagraphs or trigraphs of the fricative and affricated consonants (for more see [Dini 2000:316]). For instance, in the Lithuanian hooks of East Prussia before Danielius Kleinas' Gramatiką (Grammar, 1653) the fri­ cative alveolar consonant [š], which is now marked by the letter i, was marked as in German by the trigraph sch ifch): fchwentas (sacred; BKa 1,1), later by the ligature letter fi: defiimtis (ten; Kl G 48), which was used in the writing in the Grand Duchy °f Lithuania from the sixteenth century (for more see [Palionis 1996: 31]). There from the time of Daukša the Polish tradition was followed - the consonants [š] and [č] were marked by two-digit ji ir cj, for example: Wiefipaties (God's) DK 1, 20 and 3ernaic3iu (Samogitians') DK 1, 16-17 (for more see [Palionis 1967: 33]). From 1864 to 1904 the tsarist Russian authorities banned the use of the Latin letters and tried to impose on Lithuanian writing "graždanka", but it did not take foot in Lithuania. True, a lot of effort went into adapting the Russian letterings to the Lithuanian language. To this end several variants of the Cyrillica, which appeared because of a great diversity of marking the Lithuanian sounds that were absent from the Rus- Slan language were created (for more see [Subačius 2004:139 tt]). 2. The old traditions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are carried °n by the voiced nasal letters with diacritic hooks below them A q, Ę ę, Į į, and ^ H- Earlier they marked nasal vowels which stem from mixed diphthongs {žąsis < Zansis; goose). The first letters q, ę (true, not with "hooks" but with "branches", e.g., °>e) which were already marked in Mažvydas' books, the letters /, ų (with "branch- es ) appeared a little later. In the manuscripts of translations of the anonymous six­ teenth-century Wolfenbuttel Postill and Jonas Bretkūnas' Bible, vowels with dots Jnderneath them (A q, Ę ę, / /, Ų u), cf. mufu (our; WP lr,15), fiemę (earth; WP lv,18), balfq (voice; WP 2r,l) were used instead of the letters with "little tails". But this ver­ sion did not take root in print, as evidently printing presses had no such type. For example, perhaps due to misprints instead of those letters two-digit letters an, en, in, Un> or simple a, e, i, u were used in Bretkūnas' books [Subačius 2001: 129]. After the nasality of these vowels disappeared, they now are pronounced as other °ng vowels, which are written with the letters A a, E e, Y y, and Ū ū in Lithuanian, nerefore nowadays the letter with a "hook" in the word žąsis (goose) looks for many 48 Danguolė Mikulėnienė people only as a relic and tradition. True, in the dialects the nasality of this vowel is still easy to trace, cf. žonsis, žūsis and others in the Žemaitian dialect. Therefore, even before World War II some linguists made plans for reform of the orthography. "Rašybos reformos projekte" (A Draft of Orthography Reform, 1933) Antanas Salys, Pranas Skardžius and Jurgis Talmantas suggested that special let­ ters for long vowels should be introduced: they suggested that that all vowels of his­ toric length, which are long in unstressed positions should be marked with a dash above them (a, e, i, u), as they are "only pronounced as long vowels but are not nasal sounds" [Salys 1979: 49]. Although this orthography would have complied with the most important phonetic requirement "one letter for one sound", this proposal was not accepted in 1938 either. That is how the orthography of the former nasal vowels ą, ę {šąla, bąla, mąžta-, gęsta - gets cold, pale, smaller, goes bad) and other, which are now pronounced as long sounds has remained. Eighty decades on, now in the twenty-first century, the same questions are being addressed and the same arguments are used (see http://www.vlkk.lt/ naujienos/nau- jiena.1068.html). The State Commission for the Lithuanian Language is discussing the proposal to simplify the orthography and to give up using vowel with "hooks" at least in some words. Words of the same origin but with different spelling look really illogic, eg. bąla (< *banal, grows pale), šąla (< *šanla, gets cold) and šyla (< *šinla, gets warm), kyla (< *kinla, rises)3. So far neither the general public nor linguists have come to an agreement on this issue and, it looks as though no agreement will be reached in the near future. Until then the traditional (historic) orthography should be maintained. 3. In the history of Lithuanian orthography those letters for which there are no equivalents in the Latin alphabet had the most varied graphic expression. For instance, already Kleinas (1653)4, started using the letter ė to denote the narrow vo­ wel [ė] in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the end of the nineteenth cen­ tury that its usage prevailed. For instance, this grapheme was used together with e in the newspaper Varpas (The Bell) in 1889. Between 1890 and 1891 only e was in use; from 1892 to 1893 besides e the letter ė can be found, while from the end of 1893 only ė was in use [Venckienė 2005: 102]. Even more varied letters were used for Lithuanian consonants. The use of letters i, c (used by the Czechs since the time of Jan Hus) was promoted from the mid-nineteenth and did not prevail until the end of the nineteenth century. The use of the letter ž spread earlier. The consonant [v] in early writing was written as w (sometimes as u); v only ap­ peared in the mid-nineteenth century in the Greater Lithuania. The hard [1] was denoted by the letter I following Polish orthography until the end of the nineteenth century. 3 For instance, Kazimieras Būga wrote ašė kjla, šjla [Būga 1958: 397 tt]. For more see [Salys 1979a: 66]. ' For more about this and other letters used by D. Kleinas see [Palionis 1996: 30]. On the history of Lithuanian orthography: traditions and innovations 49 In early writing the graphic image of the palatal consonant [j] also varied. The use of the letter j was rather consistent in the books by Liudvikas Rėza (1625) and Kleinas (1653). In the written texts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania this consonant was denoted by the letter i or digraph ij.