Prano Skardžiaus laiškas Lietuvių kalbos ir literatūros instituto leidinio „Lietuvių kalbos tarmės. Chrestomatija“ (Vilnius: Mintis, 1970) sudarytojams

[Pranas Skardžius’s letter to the editors of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature publication “Lithuanian Dialects: A Reader” (Vilnius: Mintis, 1970)] Washington, D. C. 1971.III.10 E. Grinaveckienei, A. Jonaitytei, K. Morkūnui, B. Vanagienei, A. Vidugiriui. Dear colleagues, My heartfelt thanks for Lithuanian Dialects, which I received today. It is truly an excellent and immensely valuable work: alongside Z. Zinkevičius’s Lithuanian Dialectology, it is a second major contribution not only to the practical study of standard (literary) Lithuanian, but also to Lithuanian linguistics as a whole, especially the study of Lithuanian dialects. Both works represent a major step forward, and there is no doubt that further works of this kind will follow: more specialized and thorough descriptions and studies of individual dialects, of which there is still such a great shortage. On quickly leafing through this entire work, two things caught my eye. First of all, the transcription: it is the same as that used for the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language, by many collectors and transcribers with varying levels of education but differing dialectographic training; consequently, certain inconsistencies occur, all of which you could no longer iron out. On the other hand, it is somewhat regrettable that, for technical or other reasons, this transcription could not be brought more fully into line with the resolutions of the 1925 Copenhagen conference of phoneticians, which J. Gerulis applied with fairly good success in his dialect studies (Litauische Dialektstudien), and which P. Jonikas and A. Salys further pursued in their description of the Pagramantis dialect. But I was pleased that you decided to adhere to the traditional classification. In any case, I felt very sorry for the Central Highlanders and the Dzūkians, whom A. Girdenis and Z. Zinkevičius have proposed eliminating. But any classification is relative, not absolute: it depends on which approach to dividing dialects proves more obvious, familiar, and practical. On the other hand, what does, for example, the Kupiškėnai dialect mean, when the Subatėnai are also included in it, although the latter differ from one another in many respects, for example kɔːrvā ir kɔːrvæ? The Subačius dialect text itself already contains some variations. For example, instead of nebėr, people said nebaːr; instead of mɔ-ki.n’ť’is – mɔ́ki.t’is’, aikštė: – aikštę, and so on. That is all for now. Once again, thank you for the excellent book, and I wish you all success—and may you produce more excellent works. With heartfelt regards Pr. Skardžius 37