Eiko Sakurai. „Lietuvių kalba“

E. Sakurai. Lithuanian language 313 EIKO SAKURAI LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE Tokyo: Hakusui-sha, 2007, 157 p. A Lithuanian language textbook written by Eiko Sakurai has been published in Japan by Hakusui-sha, Tokyo. Its author Eiko Sakurai studied Lithuanian language in Japan with Professor Michio Yan. In 1997, she received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania to study at Vilnius University. Later, he taught Lithuanian at Nagoya University in Japan. Since 2001 she has been teaching Lithuanian at Osaka University of Foreign Languages, which was incorporated into Osaka University in autumn 2007. Eiko Sakurai is interested in Lithuanian language morphology and syntax, and has published articles on Lithuanian language tense and verb categories. Eiko Sakurai Lithuanian Language is the first textbook of Lithuanian language written in Japanese and one of the first Lithuanian language teaching (learning) tools published in Japan. It was published in the series of publications for foreign language learning "Naujasis ekspresas". Textbook with thin coloured covers, 157 numbered pages. The book was accompanied by a CD recorded by Renata Petruškevičienė and Andrius Geležauskas. At the beginning of the book there is a preface (p. 3), which briefly introduces Lithuania and the Lithuanian language. Following are instructions on how to use the textbook and the contents. More about Lithuanian language, its state status, dialects is written in the introduction of the textbook (p. 8–9). It lists and proposes educational literature of Lithuanian language: Dambriūno, Klimo and Schmalstiego1 textbooks, which have been used in Japan for a long time, the new Ramonienė and Presso2 textbooks, as well as the Lithuanian-Japanese dictionary3 and the electronic English-Lithuanian Omni dictionary4 by the famous Japanese Baltist Ikuo Murata. 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. 1500 important words in Lithuanian, 1994, Tokyo: Daigakusyorin. 4 http://led.ot.lt/index.jsp 314 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 81 The textbook begins with the phonetic section (pp. 10–19). It includes the Lithuanian alphabet, separately discussed vowels and consonants, their pronunciation, diphthongs, diphthongs, the contradiction of hard and soft consonants, similarity of consonants. The phonetic section ends with a brief description of Lithuanian accent and preposition. The main part of the textbook is divided into twenty lessons. Each lesson is designed according to strict structure and form requirements. One lesson, regardless of its content, has four pages and begins with one page of text. Their genre is remarkable: as many as 19 texts are dia logues, in which Japanese Aiko talks to a Lithuanian interlocutor, and only the last text is an example of a letter. Here are the approximate themes of the texts (in order): greeting, getting acquainted, starting a conversation; family, kinship; the journey; a telephone conversation; guests, banquets, walking around Vilnius; time; disease; time; how to ask the way; mail; birthday, gifts; holidays in the countryside; museum and concert; Ethnographic regions of Lithuania; letter to grandparents in the village. The texts of the first ten lessons are provided with Japanese phonetic transcription. The adjacent page gives the translation of the text, a string of memorable phrases and a glossary with explanations. In the vocabulary, the words are initially presented in the form they are used in the text, and from the eleventh lesson onwards their basic forms are given (for example, sigti, sega, sigo). All words are not only conjugated, but also their pronunciation is indicated, they are described grammatically (noun genus, use of prepositions) and form construction references are given (e.g. bùs < bätti, šalčiaũ < szálta). The third and fourth pages of the lesson cover grammar. Only the essentials are presented briefly, very often using tables and giving a few examples. Usually three to five topics are reviewed at once. For example, in the fifth lesson, in which a text on family and kinship relationships is read and examined, the following topics are briefly explained: the meaning of the verbs have, love and want and the present tense forms, the formation of the singular ending forms of nouns, the control of the verb want, the notation of the control of the positive and negative forms of the so-called ending verbs (have, etc.) with a vowel, the formation of the noun’s sister ending and adjective forms, demonstrative pronouns (as well as the interrogative who) and their combination with nouns. Students are given assignments every second lesson (a total of ten sets of 5-7 assignments). They are allocated two pages each. Frequently asked questions E. Sakurai. Lithuanian language 315 (from given) and write in the sentence the appropriate word or construction; make and record the necessary word form; choose the appropriate word form from several given ones; translate into Lithuanian language and record Japanese phrases in dialogues etc. The answers to the questions are at the bottom of the second page. In addition, at the end of the textbook (pp. 134–137) the correctly completed exercises are translated into Japanese. In addition, the textbook provides space for more important communication topics. The following topics are covered: family, states and nations, numerals, the clock, food and related expressions (in the store and in the cafe), expression of place, quantitative and quantitative numerals (ten, hundred and thousands), money and related expressions, expression of time (nouns and prepositional constructions). The most commonly used words and phrases of each topic are presented, along with their pronunciation and translation into Japanese. The textbook texts (dialogues) reflected natural communication situations and spoken language words and phrases, e.g.: „[Jõnas:] Taump, àš esù lietùvis. Are you a woman? [Áiko:] No, I don't. I am Japanese” (p. 20); „[Áiko:] Lãbas vãkaras. Excuse me, is there a river? [Woman:] No, that's not necessary. [Áiko:] I'm very sorry. [Výras:] Niẽko tókio” (p. 52); „[Ramùtė:] Is that what you want? [He:] I'd like to buy you a computer. [Ramutė:] A computer?! [Jõnas:] Tap, bèt kompiùteris, ku riõ j nóri, laba brangùs… Gál galtum paskólinti pinig? [Ramùtė:] He knows me. Kek táu reiekkia? [He:] 1,000 (a thousand) pounds. I'm going to give it to you!" (p. 106) and others. For example, the words blỹnas, ttis, tušinùkas, zuukkis. On the other hand, some phrases seem artificial and more typical of journalistic language, e.g.: „[Jõnas:] ė mūgę susėrenka Lietuvõs folkloro ansámbliai, mu zikán tai i šokjai“ (p. 66); „[Jonas:] In Vilnius you can’t see how Lithuanians lived in the early days. We have a lot of modern buildings here… You know, we are planning to go to Latvia with our cars during our holidays with Laima. Would you like to ride with us?" (p. 124). The appendix of the textbook provides, as mentioned, Japanese translations of the answers to the exercises and a summary of the grammar, mostly in the form of tables (pp. 138–143). They provide conjugation of nouns, adjectives and some numerals (vienas, du, trys, keturi, devyni, dešimt, šimtas), personification of non-conjugative and conjugative verbs, construction of imperative forms, construction of participles and conjugation. The conjugation tables for ordinary and nominative adjectives, personal, relative, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns are given above (p. 102–103). 316 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 81 Some remarks on the presentation of Lithuanian grammar in the textbook5. The conjugation of nouns is described sparingly along with the pronunciation. Only the general pronunciation system and the division into accents (accent and preposition discussed in the phonetics section) are explained separately. When reviewing conjugation, all nouns are divided into the traditional five conjugations, the newer classification6 is not chosen. The conjugation of the soft io, iu and ia stems (of nouns such as kelias, vaisius, marti) is not shown in the tables. On the other hand, the conjugation of the nouns knife and horse, sister and daughter is presented separately (p. 139). The decision to include the exclamation form in the singular paradigms of nouns is questionable (p. 33, 139). The distinction between the forms of the vowel (which always coincide with the noun) is completely incomprehensible in the paradigms of adjectives (it is not in the paradigms of numerals and participles). There are three adjective conjugations (they are represented by the adjectives white, beautiful, woody), a total of six paradigms of both genera. The conjugation of soft stem adjectives (e.g. green, green) is not reflected again. But most importantly, there is no example of conjugation of adjectives such as didelis, kairys (third paradigm of the new classification). In the third person present tense of verbs, as in school grammar, the endings -a, -i, -o are used instead of the stem endings7 (p. 32, 142). Therefore, the length of the multiples is also increased. This way of presenting personification requires less morphological processes to be explained, but the student has to learn more extremities. The future forms of verbs are discussed separately. In the table in the appendices, the future tense suffix is presented together with the endings of the persons and forms the endings of the person forms, which the student has to learn by heart. The table in the main part of the textbook (p. 86) separates the endings from the suffix, but only the short variant of the suffix -sis given, so the construction of some person forms has to be interpreted in an unreasonable way, e.g.: válgy-s-iu, válgy-s-ime, válgy-s-ite… Perhaps following the Grammar of Contemporary Lithuanian Language (p. 342) the short variant of the first person (-tume) of the plural of the pronoun and the long variant of the second person (-tumėte) of the ending were chosen. 5 The author was subjected to strict requirements of the publishers of the foreign language textbook series „Naujasis ekspresas“: the textbook could not be thicker than 150 pages, so many of the grammar topics had to be reduced, and some had to be abandoned altogether. 6 It is presented, for example, in Contemporary Lithuanian Language Grammar (Vytautas Ambrazas, ed. 11994: 69t), Lithuanian Language Encyclopedia (Kazys Morkūnas, ed. 11999: 385). 7 Plg. Aldona Paulauskienė. Morphology of the Lithuanian language, Kaunas: Šviesa, 1983, 248; Ambrosius, red. 1994: 325t, Vilnius: Mokslas, 11994: 325t. E. Sakurai. Lithuanian language 317 (the same is done with reference to the return forms). It is doubtful whether such an asymmetric paradigm shows real usage (the main part of the textbook also indicates the short second-person plural variant -tute, cf. p. 68). As already mentioned, many of the grammar topics are discussed in the grammar explanations after each lesson. These include, for example, the following topics: the management of prepositions (which is also mentioned in the glossary) and the use of prepositional constructions; combination of adjectives, pronouns and participles with nouns; the meaning of apostrophes; formation and use of grade forms of adjectives and adverbs; formation and use of noun adjectives, plurals; construction and use of prepositional and conjugative verb forms; compound forms of verbs; coordination of verb tenses; expression of denial, etc. In the textbook all Lithuanian words are spelled: not only in the texts or glossary, but also in the grammar explanations or tables. The spelling is very careful, errors are almost non-existent. For some words, only one of several possible pronunciation variants is given, for example, from the variants lkštė (2), lėkšt (4) the first one is chosen. By the way, words that do not normally receive an accent in discourse (conjunctions, prepositions, particles) should not be pronounced, at least not in dialogues – otherwise the accent of the phrase is distorted, the intonation contour of the sentence is violated (cf. i, a, gál, , pe, põ, sù in the quoted dialogue excerpts). After the appendices, the textbook includes a letter to the readers by Renata Petruškevičienė, who recorded the CD (with translation into Japanese) (p. 144). The textbook ends with a Lithuanian-Japanese dictionary (p. 145–157). It has about 600 words. The glossary indicates the pronunciation, gender and meaning of nouns; singular and plural nouns are indicated. Masculine and feminine occupational names are given as one word, e.g. dai niniñkas / -ė (2); composer (1). On the other hand, people (4) and people (3) are given as separate nouns. The personal pronouns àš and mẽs, tù and jųs are presented as separate words. Even the pronouns jas, jų, jiẽ, jõs are presented separately. Also separately presented are the attributive origins màn, tàvo, sàvo, personal and attributive mšasų, jįsų. All three (conjugated) basic forms of verbs are shown. Selects the syllable of the prepositional controlled words. Conjugated verbs are presented separately from non-conjugated verbs. Probably because of the irregular forms, the negative verbs nebăti, nėrà, nebûvo are presented separately. Prepositional derivatives are presented separately from non-prepositional verbs, so the verbs open, opens, opened can be found in different places in the vocabulary according to the alphabet; do, do, do; Darytis, dan- 318 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 81 ro si, waited; make, make, made and close, close, closed. The grade forms of adjectives and adverbs are not included in the glossary. The textbook includes two small black and white Lithuanian pictures; in one – two bearded and mustache men in national clothes, in the other – a woman and a girl dressed in everyday clothes. The book is varied by small black and white drawings next to the texts. In general, the graphics of the book are very diverse, not only the lessons, but also the components of the lessons are clearly separated from each other. On the back of the textbook is printed a map of Lithuania and neighboring Baltic countries. It shows the relief of the country, the main rivers, the major cities are marked, their names are written. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that Eiko Sakura has managed to write a short and attractive textbook. The most important information about the phonetic, grammatical and lexical structure of the Lithuanian language is reliably and methodically presented. It can be expected that the textbook will not only help Japanese learn Lithuanian, but also open their paths to Lithuanian culture, encourage them to come to Lithuania. Received 11/09/2008 THE MOTION OF ARTHUR University of Vilnius Universiteto g. 5, LT-01513 Vilnius, Lithuania Institute of Lithuanian Language P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected]