Eiko Sakurai. „Lietuvių kalba“

EIKO SAKURAI THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE Tokijas: Hakusui-sha, 2007, 157 p. A Lithuanian language textbook written by Eiko Sakurai has been published in Japan by Hakusui-sha, a Tokyo publishing house. Its author, Eiko Sakurai, studied Lithuanian in Japan with Professor Michio Yano. In 1997, having received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania, she studied at Vilnius University. Later, she taught Lithuanian at Nagoya University in Japan. Since 2001, she has lectured in Lithuanian at Osaka University of Foreign Studies, which was merged with Osaka University in the autumn of 2007. Eiko Sakurai is interested in the morphology and syntax of Lithuanian and has published articles on the categories of tense and aspect in Lithuanian. Eiko Sakurai Lithuanian is the first Lithuanian language textbook written in Japanese and, more generally, one of the first Lithuanian language teaching and learning materials published in Japan. It appeared in the “New Express” series of publications for foreign language learning. The textbook has thin, colourful covers and 157 numbered pages. A compact disc, recorded by Renata Petruškevičienė and Andrius Geležauskas, was released with the book. At the beginning of the book is a preface (p. 3), which briefly introduces Lithuania and the Lithuanian language. This is followed by instructions on how to use the textbook and a table of contents. More about the Lithuanian language, its official status, and its dialects is presented in the textbook’s introduction (pp. 8–9). It also lists recommended Lithuanian-language learning materials: the textbooks by Dambriūnas, Klimas, and Schmalstieg1, long used in Japan; the newer textbooks by Ramonienė and Press2; as well as a Lithuanian–Japanese dictionary3 by the renowned Japanese Balticist Ikuo Murata and the electronic English–Lithuanian Omni dictionary4. 1 Leonardas Dambriunas, Antanas Klimas, William R. Schmalstieg. Beginner’s Lithuanian, 1998, New York: Hippocrene books. 2 Meilutė Ramonienė, Ian Press. Colloquial Lithuanian: The Complete Course for Beginners, 1996, London / New York: Routledge. 3 Ikuo Murata. Lietuvių kalbos 1500 svarbių žodžių, 1994, Tokyo: Daigakusy orin. 4 http://led.ot.lt/index.jsp E. SAKURAI. Lietuvių kalba 313 The textbook begins with a section on phonetics (pp. 10–19). It includes the Lithuanian alphabet and discusses vowels and consonants separately, their pronunciation, diphthongs, mixed diphthongs, the opposition between hard and soft consonants, and consonant assimilation. The phonetics section concludes with a brief description of Lithuanian stress and pitch accent. The main part of the textbook is divided into twenty lessons. Each lesson follows strict structural and formal requirements. Regardless of its content, each lesson is allotted four pages and begins with a one-page text. The genre of these texts is noteworthy: 19 are dialogues in which a Japanese woman, Aiko, talks with a Lithuanian interlocutor, while only the final text is a sample letter. The texts cover approximately the following topics (in order): greetings, introductions, starting a conversation; family and relatives; travel; a telephone conversation; guests, feasting, a walk around Vilnius; time; illness; weather; asking for directions; the post office; birthdays and gifts; a holiday in the countryside; a museum and a concert; Lithuania’s ethnographic regions; a letter to grandparents in the countryside. The texts in the first ten lessons are provided with Japanese phonetic transcription. On the facing page are a translation of the text, a list of expressions to memorize, and a glossary with explanations. Glossary entries are initially given in the form used in the text, while from the eleventh lesson onward they are given in their basic forms (for example, siṙgti, serga, siṙgo). All the words are not only marked for stress, but their accentuation patterns are also indicated; they are described grammatically (including the gender of nouns and the use of prepositions), and references are given to the formation of forms (e.g., būs < būti, šalčiau < šalta). Grammar is presented on the third and fourth pages of each lesson. Only the essentials are covered briefly, tables are used very frequently, and a few examples are given. Usually, three to five topics are reviewed at once. For example, the fifth lesson, which presents and examines a text about family and kinship relations, briefly explains the following topics: the meanings and present-tense forms of the verbs turėti, mylėti ir norėti; the formation of singular accusative forms of nouns; the government of the verb norėti; the case marking governed by the affirmative and negative forms of so-called accusative-taking verbs (turėti, etc.); the formation of the accusative and genitive forms of the noun sesuo; demonstrative pronouns (including the interrogative kas) and their agreement with nouns. Exercises are provided for students every other lesson (ten sets in total, each containing 5–7 exercises). Two pages are allotted to them. Most often, students are asked to choose 314 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 (from those provided) and insert a suitable word or construction into a sentence; form and insert the required word form; choose the correct word form from several options; translate Japanese expressions into Lithuanian and insert them into dialogues, and so on. The answers to the exercises are given on the spot, at the bottom of the second page. In addition, the end of the textbook (pp. 134–137) provides Japanese translations of the correctly completed exercises. The textbook also includes material devoted to discussing important topics in communication. The topics covered include family, states and nations, numerals, telling the time, food and related expressions (in a shop and a café), expressing location, cardinal and ordinal numbers (tens, hundreds, and thousands), money and related expressions, and expressing time (nouns and prepositional constructions). Commonly used words and expressions for each topic are provided, along with their pronunciation and translation into Japanese. The natural communication situations and colloquial words and expressions reflected in the textbook’s texts (dialogues) made a pleasant impression, for example: „[Jōnas:] Yes, I am Lithuanian. And are you Chinese? [Áiko:] No, I am not Chinese. I am Japanese“ (p. 20); „[Áiko:] Good evening. Excuse me, is Jonas there? [Vyras:] No, nobody by that name lives here. [Áiko:] I’m very sorry. [Vyras:] That’s all right“ (p. 52); „[Ramūtė:] And what are you going to give her? [Jōnas:] I’d like to buy her a computer. [Ramūtė:] A computer?! [Jōnas:] Yes, but the computer she wants is very expensive... Could you lend me some money? [Ramūtė:] Of course. How much do you need? [Jōnas:] 1,000 (one thousand) litas. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get my salary!“ (p. 106), and others. Compare also the words blūnas, tėtis, tušinukas, zuikis. On the other hand, some phrases seem rather artificial and more characteristic of journalistic language; compare: „[Jōnas:] Lithuanian folk ensembles, musicians, and dancers gather at the fair“ (p. 66); „[Jonas: Indeed, in Vilnius you can’t see how Lithuanians used to live in the past. Modern buildings are being built everywhere here now... You know, Laima and I are planning to travel around Lithuania by car during our holiday. Would you like to come with us?“ (p. 124). The appendices to the textbook include, as mentioned, Japanese translations of the exercise answers and a grammar summary, mostly in table form (pp. 138–143). They present the declension of nouns, adjectives, and some numerals (vienas, du, trys, keturi, devyni, vienuolika, šimtas), the conjugation of non-reflexive and reflexive verbs, the formation of imperative forms, and the formation and declension of participles. Tables showing the declension of simple and pronominal adjectives, personal, relative, demonstrative, and indefinite pronouns are provided earlier (pp. 102–103). E. SAKURAI. Lietuvių kalba 315 A few observations on how Lithuanian grammar is presented in the textbook5. Noun declension is described concisely alongside accentuation. Only the general system of accentuation and the division into accent classes are explained separately (stress and pitch accent are discussed in the phonetics section). In reviewing declension, all nouns are assigned to the traditional five declensions; the newer classification6 is not adopted. The tables do not show the declension of nouns with the soft io, iu, and ia stems (such nouns as kelias, vaisius, marti). On the other hand, the declension of the nouns peilis and arklys, sesuo ir duktė is presented separately rather than being combined into a single paradigm (p. 139). It is questionable to include the vocative form in singular noun paradigms (pp. 33, 139). The inclusion of vocative forms (which always coincide with the nominative) in adjective paradigms is entirely incomprehensible (they are absent from the numeral and participle paradigms). Three adjective declensions are distinguished (represented by the adjectives baltas, gražus, medinis), giving six paradigms in all for both genders. Again, the declension of adjectives with a soft stem-final consonant (e.g., žalias, žalia) is not represented. Most importantly, however, no declension example is given for adjectives such as didelis, kairys, which belong to the third paradigm in the newer classification. For the third person singular present tense of verbs, as in school grammars, the distinction is made between endings -a, -i, -o rather than stem-final consonants7 (pp. 32, 142). Correspondingly, longer plural endings are also distinguished. This approach to presenting conjugation requires explaining fewer morphophonological processes, but students have to learn more endings. The formation of future-tense verb forms merits separate discussion. In the table in the appendices, the future-tense suffix is presented together with the personal endings, forming the endings of the personal forms, which students must memorize. In the table in the main part of the textbook (p. 86), the endings are separated from the suffix, but only the short variant of the suffix, -s-, is given. Consequently, the formation of some personal forms has to be explained in a wholly unjustified way; compare: vãlgy-s-iu, vãlgy-s-ime, vãlgy-s-ite... Perhaps, following Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika (cf. p. 342), the short variant of the first-person plural conditional ending (-tume) and the long variant of the second-person plural ending (-tumėte) have been chosen. 5 The author had to meet the strict requirements set by the publishers of the foreign-language textbook series „Naujasis ekspresas“: the textbook could not exceed 150 pages, so many grammar topics had to be condensed, and some omitted altogether. 6 It is presented, for example, in Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatikoje (Vytautas Ambrazas, ed. ¹1994: 69t), Lietuvių kalbos enciklopedijoje (Kazys Morkūnas, comp. ¹1999: 385). 7 Cf. Aldona Paulauskienė. Lietuvių kalbos morfologijos apybraiža, Kaunas: Šviesa, 1983, 248; Vytautas Ambrazas, ed. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika, Vilnius: Mokslas, ¹1994: 325t. 316 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81 (the same procedure is followed for reflexive forms). It is doubtful whether such an asymmetrical paradigm reflects actual usage (the main part of the textbook also gives the short second-person plural variant –tute, cf. p. 68). As already mentioned, many grammatical topics are covered in the grammatical explanations that follow each lesson. These include, for example, such topics as prepositional government (also indicated in the glossary) and the use of prepositional constructions; the agreement of adjectives, pronouns, and participles with nouns; the meanings of cases; the formation and use of degrees of adjectives and adverbs; the formation and use of pronominal adjectives and collective numerals; the formation and use of prefixed and reflexive verb forms; compound verb forms; the sequence of tenses; the expression of negation, and so on. All Lithuanian words in the textbook are marked for stress—not only in the texts and glossary, but also in the grammatical explanations and tables. The stress marking is very meticulous, with almost no errors. Of several possible stress variants, only one is given for some words; for example, of the variants lėkštė (2), lėkštė (4), the first is selected. Incidentally, words that do not normally receive stress in discourse (conjunctions, prepositions, and particles) should not be stressed, at least in dialogues; otherwise, phrase stress is distorted and the intonational contour of the sentence is disrupted (cf. ir̃, ar̃, gál, į̃, per̃, põ, sù in the quoted dialogue excerpts). After the appendices, the textbook includes a letter to readers (with a translation into Japanese) from Renata Petruškevičienė, who recorded the CD (p. 144). The textbook concludes with a Lithuanian–Japanese glossary (pp. 145–157). It contains about 600 words. The glossary indicates the stress pattern, gender, and meaning of nouns; singular-only and plural-only nouns are marked. Masculine and feminine occupational titles are presented as a single entry, for example: dainininkas / -ė (2); kompozitorius / -ė (1). On the other hand, the forms žmogùs (4) and žmónės (3) are listed as separate nouns. The personal pronouns àš and mès, tù ir jūs are listed as separate words. Even the pronouns jis, ji, jiẽ, jós are listed separately. The possessive genitives màno, tàvo, šàvo, as well as the personal and possessive forms mūsų, jūsų, are also listed separately. All three principal verb forms (with stress marks) are given. The case of words governed by prepositions is indicated. Reflexive verbs are listed separately from non-reflexive ones. Presumably because of its irregular forms, the negative verb nebū́ti, nerà, nebùvo is listed separately. Prefixed derivatives are listed separately from non-prefixed verbs; thus, in different alphabetical positions in the glossary, one finds the verbs atidaryti, atidãro, atidãrė; daryti, dãro, dãrė; darytis, dā- E. SAKURAI. Lietuvių kalba 317 rosi, dārėsi; padaryti, padāro, padarė and uždaryti, uždāro, uždarė. The glossary does not include comparative forms of adjectives and adverbs. The textbook contains two small black-and-white photographs of Lithuanians: one shows two bearded, moustached men in national dress, and the other a casually dressed woman and girl. Small black-and-white illustrations alongside the texts add variety to the book. Overall, the book’s layout is varied, and not only the lessons but also their component parts are clearly distinguished from one another. The endpaper of the textbook features a map of Lithuania and the neighbouring Baltic countries. It shows the region’s topography and main rivers, with major cities marked and their names written in. In conclusion, it is worth emphasizing that Eiko Sakurai has succeeded in writing a concise and engaging textbook. The essential information it provides about the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical structure of Lithuanian is reliable and presented methodically. It may be hoped that the textbook will not only help Japanese people learn Lithuanian, but also open the way for them to discover Lithuanian culture and encourage them to visit Lithuania. Received 2008 09 11 ARTŪRAS JUDŽĖNTIS Vilnius University. Universiteto g. 5, LT-01513 Vilnius Institute of the Lithuanian Language. P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius [email protected] 318 KALBOS KULTŪRA | 81