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

[Letter of Pranas Skardžius to the editors of the Lithuanian ir Language and Literature Institute’s publication “Lithuanian Language Dialects: Chrestomatija” (Vilnius: Mintis)] 1970) Washington, D.C. 1971.111.10 E. Grinaveckienei, A. Jonaitytei, K. Morkūnui, B. Vanagienei, Vidugiriui. Dear A. Guests, Thank you very much už Lithuanian dialects that I received today. This is really a great greatly valuable ir work: next Z. Zinkevičius’ Lithuanian dialectology is the second major work not only for the practice of Lithuanian common (literary) language, but also for the whole Lithuanian language science, especially Lithuanian dialectology. Both these works are a big step forward, and there is no doubt that more of this kind of more special, more thorough descriptions of individual dialects, studies, which are still so lacking, will appear in the future. After a quick look at all this work, two things came to my attention. First of all, the transcription: it is the same as the Lithuanian language atlas, used by many and different educated, but unequal dialectic preparation collectors and recorders, and therefore there are certain inconsistencies, which you could no longer equalize. On the other hand, it is a bit regrettable that due to technical obstacles or other reasons, this transcription could not be more harmonized with the decisions of the 1925 Copenhagen conference of phoneticists, which J. Gerulis, relatively successfully, applied in his dialect studies (Litauische Dialektstudien) and P. Jonikas with A. Salis continued this in the description of the Pagramantis dialect. But I liked that you decided to stick to the traditional classification. Anyway, I was very sorry for the middle Highlanders and Dzūkians, whom A. Girdenis and Z. Zinkevičius have planned to eliminate. Any classification is conditional, not absolute: desti, which approach to dividing dialects will turn out more obvious, more common and more practical. On the other hand, what does e.g. The Kupiškėn dialect, which includes the Subathen dialect, which differs considerably from each other, e.g. korvž and kova? There are some variations in the text of the Subačius dialect itself. For example, instead of nebėr it was said nebarr, instead of mo-ki.n't'is —m3-ki.t'is', aikštė" —aikstz. etc. That's it for now. Once again thank you for a great book, and I wish you all good luck in your future work. With cordial greetings Ms. Skardžius 37