VIOLETA ČERNĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

IRENA ERMANYTĖ AT 75

In the village of Nugarės, seven kilometres from Kuršėnai, Irena was born into the family of Povilas Zenonas Ermanis and Kristina Petraitytė in 1937, on July 3, at the height of the lime trees’ flowering. Before the war, eight people lived in her native Nugarės. Now only two homesteads remain there. The two isolated homesteads, belonging to the Ermanis brothers, have become wooded areas. In the past, the whole village would gather at the Ermanis homestead to listen to the news, as the house had an excellent Philips radio. Villagers would come here to have their photographs taken on various festive occasions or to get pictures for their documents—Irena’s father, whom the whole family called Žanys, had an old-fashioned tripod camera. His homemade windmill hummed at the homestead, generating electricity; her mother’s carefully tended garden rustled with its many fruit trees and shrubs, and there were as many as 28 beehives. The future linguist, too, had to gather honey from the hives and catch swarms. From her childhood, Irena remembers the story of the Jewish girls whom her family took in during the Second World War. For saving and sheltering them, her parents were posthumously awarded Righteous Among the Nations medals and certificates.

From their earliest years, the children (besides the youngest, Irena, there was also her sister) were instilled with what Irena called a religion of work. At the age of six, Irena

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learned to read on her own, using the many books, newspapers, and magazines collected in their home. At the primary school in the village of Smurgiai, she was moved straight from first grade to third. The future linguist completed her secondary education in Kuršėnai. Her Lithuanian language and literature teacher there was the late poet Stasys Anglickis. Irena loved reading. At school, her friends—half-seriously, half-jokingly—had nicknamed her a walking encyclopedia.

In 1961, after completing her studies at the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute, Irena Ermanytė began working at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature (since 1990, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language). Irena recalls that, in the days of director Kostas Korsakas, the Institute (to which she remained loyal throughout her life) seemed to a young employee like a sanctuary, and they regarded their senior colleagues with great respect. She began in the Department of Dialectology (then a section) and later moved to the Dictionary Department. “Work requiring iron patience”—that is how Irena would describe lexicographers’ work many years later. It began with trial texts. You do not become a lexicographer simply by finishing your studies. The lexicographer recalls checking every line, every word. Irena regards the linguist and lexicographer Jonas Paulauskas as her teacher; from him she learned to work patiently and with concentration. Irena Ermanytė’s name first appears as a dictionary-text author in volume IX of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (1973), and from volume XVII (1996) onward, the linguist also edited the dictionary.

Over time, Irena became interested in antonyms. She has called them the love of her life. Why antonyms? Irena jokes that the culprit is the law of the unity and struggle of opposites: during her philosophy exam, she happened to draw precisely that question. Good and evil, darkness and light, black and white, heavy and light, strong and weak, to affirm and to deny... This chain woven from opposites gave rise to the first dictionary of its kind in Lithuania: in 1985, she published the Dictionary of Lithuanian Antonyms.

In 1993, Irena Ermanytė defended her dissertation Lithuanian Antonymy and Antonyms as an external candidate. Antonyms seemed to take hold of all Irena’s thoughts: she immediately notices antonymic word pairs when reading a text and hears them when listening to the radio. She collects material, and it continues to grow. In 2002 she prepared the School Dictionary of Lithuanian Antonyms; in 2003, a substantial Dictionary of Antonyms, containing 5,259 antonym entries. The material was gathered from twenty volumes of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, fiction, folklore, and periodicals. Once again, Irena turned from lexicographic practice toward theory. In 2008, her monograph Antonymy and Antonyms appeared.

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Irena speaks of the more than 50 expeditions to collect words as a gift of fate. The first was the most impressive. In 1958, as a fourth-year student, she went to Varniai. The expedition was led by Professor Vladas Grinaveckis. Later, while working at the Institute, she had occasion to talk with a shepherd sitting among the cows in Pelesojè, another time in Ródūnė and Gervėčiai, to speak with people from the Kupiškis region, to interview people from Marcinkonys, and to listen to Dzūkian melodies. And what a marvel it was when old women opened their dowry chests and spread out the three-, four-, and six-thread-woven garments. Irena remembers the late Kazimieras Pakalka, who always carried around an old-fashioned tape recorder with a wooden casing, huge and heavy, weighing some ten kilograms.

Irena Ermanytė has done a great deal of work on other dictionaries as well—together with others, she compiled the Dictionary of the Rivers and Lakes of the Lithuanian SSR (1963), the Dictionary of Phraseology (2001), and the School Dictionary of International Words (four editions—1995, 1998, 2000, 2010). She published articles on lexicography and lexicology, toponymy, and questions of language culture in Kalbos kultūra, Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai (Acta Linguistica Lithuanica), Gimtoji kalba, and other publications. For a long time, the linguist served on the judging committee for the Young Philologists’ competitions. She also edited many books, translated from Latvian (together with others, she translated the Encyclopedia of Mythology), reviewed dictionaries and textbooks, and compiled various publications.

As one leafs through photographs capturing moments at the Institute, an elegant blonde lady catches the eye. Warmth and serenity in her face, a restrained smile. I have heard people say: “incredibly sincere, sensitive, and virtuous.” Or: “she is the only person I have never managed to quarrel with, either.”

Irena Ermanytė has twice received the Lithuanian Science Award (together with others)—in 1996 for her work on the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, and in 2002 for her work on the Dictionary of Phraseology.

May you live many years, dear Irena!

Received 2012 11 05

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