Acta Baltko-Slavica, 33 SOW, Warszawa 2009

Danguolė Mikulėnienė The Institute of the Vilnius

ON THE HISTORY OF LITHUANIAN : 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 above or elow words does not suit us; we would like our writing not to be so full of various »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 (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? ^R S T V X *

! 0 t it v p >.

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 : 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 [], which is now marked by the 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 hooks below them A q, Ę ę, Į į, and ^ H- Earlier they marked nasal vowels which stem from mixed {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- ) 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, (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 spread earlier. The consonant [v] in early writing was written as (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 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 ij. It should be noted that the tradition of writing the upper case letter / and lower case j varied. Giedrius Subačius wrote that it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that printers in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania star­ ted using two different graphemes consistently - / and I [Subačius 2003: 256]. The tradition of writing suggested by Kuršaitis (Kurschat) was followed until the middle of the twentieth century: the consonant [j] must have a graphic expres­ sion when it is pronounced. Kuršaitis made the only exception: the consonant [j] is pronounced but not written after the explosive consonants [p] and [b] which are Pronounced with both lips *piauti (cut), *spiauti (spit), *rugpiūtis (August), *piuvenos (sawdust) and others. True, basing themselves on the facts of spoken language, at the beginning of the twentieth century first Būga and, later Skardžius, suggested Writing them with the letter j: bjaurus (ugly), bjurti (get worse), pjauti (cut), pjūvis (a cut), pjaulai, pjudyti (set dogs on), spjūvis (spit) and so on. [Būga 1957: 39; Skardžius 1998: 333]. The graphic expression of the letter [j] was not simplified until 1976: the excep­ tions proposed by Kuršaitis were rejected, and the words pjauti, spjauti, rugpjūtis, Pjuvenos and others were written with this letter [RS 40-41]. In this way phonetic correction was chosen. The use of the short vowels i and u and the long ones y and " in the forms the future tense of the verbs was systemised, and the syllabication of Words was made easy. True, not everything was so simple. Who would have thought that at the end of the twentieth century the norms of pronouncing the letter [j] would be broken: lhe borrowed word kompiuteris (computer) entered Lithuanian through the Russian language and is pronounced without the letter [j]5. Understandably, the English pro- nunciation would be closer, but the pronunciation with [j] did not take root. When the Russian version without [j] prevailed, the hiatus with two vowels, which is not characteristic of Lithuanian in the noun kompiuteris was annulled.

4. On the whole, Lithuanian orthography is based on the three principles - pho­ bic (phonologic), morphologic and traditional (historic) [RS 11-14]. The morphologic principle of orthography is particularly characteristic of the Lithuanian language. According to it, the same morphemes of words are written in the same way even when they are pronounced differently, cf. verbs with the prefix 'f- (pronounced as [iš]: iš-plaukia (sails away), iš-šluoja (sweeps out); pronounced as N: H-dirba (works out)). All cases of the assimilation of consonants are based on this principle - the voiceless (cf. dirba works [b] - dirbti [p], to work) or the sonorous (cf. versti, to turn over [s] - versdamas, turning over) [z]). So the morphologic writing

5 P'g. [kDm'p'ùt'er'is] [Vitkauskas 2001:146]. 50 Danguolė Mikulėnienė

does not coincide with that of the phonetic (or rather phonologic) and is closer to the historic way of writing. Deviations from the morphologic writing are rare. For instance, the word auk­ štas, -a (high): the consonant appeared in the root as very few users of the language can see the connection between the adjective aukštas, -a and its main verb augti, auga, augo (to grow, grows, grew). True, in this case and similar ones there were variations: following the example of Daukša, Būga suggested writing rūgštus (sour), rūgštis (acid) (cf. rūgo, got sour), and Jablonskis - baukštus (shy), although pa-būgo (got scared; for more see [Skardžius 1999:610-611]). As we have seen (see 2), the historic principle is well illustrated by the example of (not) writing letters with "hooks" in the root of words. The traditional way of writing is not an exceptional phenomenon. The writing of such letters in the endings now, for example, tą gražią {gražiąją) mergaitę (that pretty girl, in the genitive case), shows that with time, it will cause more problems. The point is that fewer and fewer Lithuanian language speakers pronounce the long unstressed vowels at the end of the word. The length of the end vowels of the word is not maintained either. Therefore the demand to simplify Lithuanian orthography, particularly those words based on the historic principle will grow. And there will be more attempts to switch over to the phonetic (phonologic) principle.

5. Discussion about the writing of foreign proper nouns in the original has been on in Lithuania for over more than ten years. The supporters of the traditional orthography are for writing foreign forms based only on the pronunciation. The in­ troduction of the Latin letters Q q, X x, W w in Lithuanian print is compared to trea­ son by some radical members of the public. The public is polarised: those for writing foreign proper .nouns in the original (for more see [Ambrazas 2008]) and against it (see [Urbutis 2007]). It is understandable that these and other attempts to simplify the Lithuanian or­ thography will further remove the public from the old cultural heritage. Currently much money and time is being allocated for the creation of computerised old letters. The unified print Palemonas, which comprises more than four thousand signs has been created and is accessed at (http://www.vlkk.lt/palemonas.html). All letters of early writing are presented there (see [Aleknavičienė ir kt. 2005]). The website of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language already has a database of early writing. It is foreseen that for research purposes it will contain as many texts in Lithuanian from the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries as pos­ sible (http://www.lki.lt./seniejirastai.html). Therefore realising that the development of language as well as orthography cannot be avoided, first of all we have to create conditions for the safeguarding and continuity of the linguistic cultural heritage and language traditions. The reforms of orthography and other which are being put in place must not cut the roots of the history of language. On the history of Lithuanian orthography: traditions and innovations 51

LITERATURE

Aleknavičienė ir kt. 2005 - O. Aleknavičienė, L. Grumadienė, A. Gurskas, P. Skir­ mantas, M. Strockis, V. Tumasonis, Lituanistinis šriftas Palemonas. Vilnius: Tau­ tinių bendrijų namai, 2005. Ambrazas 2008 - V. Ambrazas, Svetimų tikrinių vardų rašymas. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2008,60 p. - J. Bretkūnas, Kancionalas (1589) [in]: http://www.lki.lt/seniejirastai/db.php?source=13 Buga 1958 - K. Būga, Del mūsų rašybos (rašybos mažmožiai) [in]: K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai 1. Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1958, 384-400. ^ini 2000 - P.U. Dini, Baltų kalbos lyginamoji istorija. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų lei­ dykla, 2000. DK- Mikalojus Daukša, Katekizmas (1595) [in]:http://\vww.lki.lt/seniejirastai/db.php?source=l nttp://www.lki.lt./seniejirastai.html ^tlp://w\vw.vlkk.lt/naujienos/naujiena.l068.html nttp://www.vlkk.lt/palemonas.html Jablonskis 1957 - Lietuviškos kalbos gramatika. Rašytojams ir skaitytojams vadovėlis. Parašė Petras Kriaušaitis. Tilžėje 1901 [in]: J. Jablonskis, Rinktiniai raštai 1. Sudarė J.Palio­ nis. Vilnius: Politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1957, p. 59-182. Kl G - D. Klein, Grammatica Litvanica [in]: Pirmoji lietuvių kalbos gramatika. 1653 me­ tai. Ats. red. J. Kruopas. Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1957, 66-394. Mažvydas 1993 - M. Mažvydas, Katekizmas ir kiti raštai. Catechismus und andere Schrif- ten. Faksimilių rinkinys. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1993. Palionis 1967 - J. Palionis, Lietuvių literatūrinė kalba XVI-XVII a. Vilnius: Mintis, 1967. Palionis 1996 - J. Palionis, XV/// a. lietuvių rašyba [in]: Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai 36, 1996, 30-50. Palionis 2000-J. Palionis, Martyno Mažvydo rašyba [in]: G. Michel in i, Martyno Mažvydo raštai ir jų šaltiniai. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 2000,44-60. - Lietuvių kalbos rašyba ir skyryba. Ats. red. A. Valeckienė. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1976. Salys 1979 - A. Salys, P. Skardžius, J. Talmantas, „Rašybos reformos projektas" (1933) [in]: A. Salys, Raštai 1. Bendrinė kalba. Roma: Lietuvos katalikų mokslo akademija, 1979, p. 46-68. Salys 1979a - A. Salys, Naujosios rašybos belaukiant [in]: A. Salys, Raštai 1. Bendrinė kalba. Roma: Lietuvos katalikų mokslo akademija, 1979, p. 65-68. kardžius 1998 - P. Skardžius, Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos kursas (1962) [in]: P. Skardžius, Rinktiniai raštai 3. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 1998, 325-347. Skardžius 1999 - P. Skardžius, Dėl rašybos reformos reikalingumo (1930) [in]: P. Skar­ džius, Rinktiniai raštai 5. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 1999, 609-613. Subačius 2001 - G. Subačius, Spaustuvininkų įtaka rašybai ir jos standartams [in]: Archi- vum Lithuanicum 3,2001,129-152. Subačius 2003 - G. Subačius, XV1I1-X1X amžiaus lietuviškų tekstųgrafemos ir [in]: Archivum Lithuanicum 5,227-262. 52 Danguolė Mikulėnienė

Subačius 2004 - G. Subačius, Lietuviška ir rusiška lietuviškų spaudinių kirilika [in]: Raidžių draudimo metai. Sud. D. Staliūnas.Vilnius: LII leidykla, 139-173. Urbutis 2007 - V. Urbutis, Kalbos išdavystė. Vilnius: Margi raštai, 2007. Venckienė 2005 - J. Venckienė, Trisdešimt šeši Aukso altoriaus maldaknygės leidimai (1885- -1907): santykis su bendrinės kalbos raida [in]: Archivum Lithuanicum 7,2005,93-122. Vitkauskas 2001- V. Vitkauskas, Lietuvių kalbos tarties žodynas. Antras pataisytas ir pa­ pildytas leidimas. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, 2001. WP- VVolfenbūtteliopostilė, 1573 [in]: http://www.lki.lt/seniejirastai/db.php?source=27

SUMMARY

The Lithuanian traditions of writing were formed in the cultural context of Eu­ rope long ago. This article highlights the main characteristics of the Lithuanian al­ phabet and writing: the spread of the Gothic-type and Latin antiqua in the sixteenth and later centuries, the failed attempts to introduce the Russian "graždanka" at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main principles of Lithuanian orthography, phonetic, morphologic and tra­ ditional (etymologic) are introduced. The traditions and innovations of Lithuanian writing are discussed in the con­ text of the twenty-first century.

Key words: Lithuanian language, orthography, alphabet, writing.

Slowa kluczowe: j?zyk litewski, ortografía, alfabet, pisownia.