ACTIVITIES OF THE STATE COMMISSION OF THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE

(Prepared on the basis of the 2014 report of the Language Commission)

LANGUAGE PROGRAMMES

The main goals and objectives of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language (hereinafter, the Language Commission) are pursued through language programmes. In 2014, 38 projects were carried out under the 2006–2015 Programme for the Standardisation, Use, Development and Dissemination of the State Language.

The final volume in the series of dictionaries of world place names commissioned by the Language Commission was published World Place Names. Asia (Cambodia–Vietnam) (Science and Encyclopaedia Publishing Centre); electronic databases and search systems were created for the dictionaries in this series, World Place Names. America and World Place Names. Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Oceania.

Three publications of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language were published, relevant not only to the language community but also to teachers, pupils and students: Klementina Vosylytė’s Dictionary of Comparisons; Žaneta Markevičienė et al.’s Dictionary of the Inner Dialect; and the volume Eastern Aukštaitians of Panevėžys, from the series Lithuanian Dialects for Schools, accompanied by a CD.

Support continued for teaching language for specific purposes at higher education institutions, state-language courses for non-Lithuanian-speaking residents of Lithuania and immigrants from third countries. Projects for language education and dissemination were also supported. Thirty titles comprising 934 publications on Lithuanian studies were purchased for the public libraries of universities, colleges, counties, national significance and municipalities.

Twelve projects were carried out under the 2011–2020 Programme for Research into the Functioning and Change of Standard Lithuanian, Dialects and Other Varieties of Language.

A scientific study of the relationship between Lithuanian syntactic norms and recommendations and contemporary usage was completed at the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences. On the basis of the study, the syntactic norms will be reviewed and recommendations for the public will be prepared if necessary.

The publication Current Issues in Administrative Language, prepared on the basis of the 2011–2012 scientific study “A Study of the Language of European Union Documents,” supported by the Language Commission, was posted on the website of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language.

Several particularly relevant research projects were launched on contemporary language (accentuation tendencies and the functioning of foreign words in standard Lithuanian, and the development of terminology), as well as on the interaction and change of standard language, dialects and other varieties of language.

LEGAL PROTECTION OF THE STATE LANGUAGE

Comments were submitted to the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania on the draft Constitutional Law on the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania. An opinion was submitted on two draft laws of the Republic of Lithuania concerning the spelling of first names and surnames in documents (Nos. XIIP-1653 and XIIP-1675).

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No support was given to the draft amendment to the provisions of Article 16 of the Law on the State Language and Article 2.40 of the Civil Code concerning the compliance of legal entities’ names with the norms of standard Lithuanian, which envisaged legalizing the use of other languages in those names.

A proposal was submitted to the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Lithuania to revise the definition of a signboard set out in the draft law amending Articles 2, 12, 24 and 26 of the Law on Advertising, so as not to create the possibility of omitting Lithuanian from signboards.

Following an appeal by the Language Commission, the Ministry of the Interior prepared draft resolutions of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania allowing a person completing an application to restore citizenship or to obtain a certificate of Lithuanian origin to write their first name and surname from a travel or other identity document using the distinctive Lithuanian letters a, ę, į, u, ū, ė, č, š, ž (previously, this had not been possible).

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LAW ON THE TERM BANK OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

During the year, 1,288 articles on terms used or proposed for use in legal acts were published in the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania (on the website terminai.vlkk.lt), along with 5 articles on terms recommended for use and 4 on terms not recommended for use in legal acts or other documents. In addition, 1,530 Lithuanian names from botanical and zoological nomenclature, recommended or positively assessed by protocol resolutions of the Language Commission, were added to the Term Bank. At the end of 2014, the Bank contained a total of 214,865 term articles: 10,618 approved, 203,078 recommended for use, and 1,169 not recommended for use.

STANDARDIZATION AND EXPERT ACTIVITIES

In 2014, 8 meetings of the Language Commission and 82 meetings of expert subcommissions were held. Approximately 230 expert opinions were prepared on the correctness of personal names, place names, institution names, words and phrases, and on the interpretation of the meanings of words and sentences, among other matters.

Terminology. At meetings of the Terminology Subcommission, 1,336 term articles from legal acts and their drafts were considered, along with 25 terminology queries (32 terms) submitted by European Union institutions through the one-stop system, 4 manuscript terminology dictionaries, additions to 1 dictionary, 2 draft Lithuanian terminology standards, additions to 1 standard, and Lithuanian botanical and zoological nomenclature names.

The 4.4 version of the European dictionary Eurovoc continued to be considered (terms in the fields of social affairs, economics, trade, science, international relations, defence, etc.).

At meetings of the Language Commission, 3 terminology dictionaries and 1 terminology standard received positive assessments, and 1,288 term articles were approved. These were terms from legal acts—most often draft acts—in areas supervised by state institutions (finance, public safety, culture, law, economics, transport, communications, agriculture, fisheries and food, energy, the environment, health, pharmaceuticals, social protection, defence, etc.).

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Approximately 400 consultations were provided by email and telephone on terminology and the replacement of foreign words. The consultees included translators, editors, and terminologists from European Union institutions, employees of Lithuanian institutions and private organizations, and other interested parties.

Two protocol resolutions were adopted on Lithuanian names for ornamental plants, and one protocol resolution on Lithuanian names for certain families of beetles.

Personal names and place names. A resolution was adopted amending the “Resolution on the Writing of Sanskrit Names and Terms”—it was decided that fiction and similar literature should use only the traditional form of the name of the founder of Buddhism, established in Lithuanian, Buda (not Budha); the rules for writing Sanskrit names and terms were also clarified to some extent.

A resolution was adopted to add the names of ethnographic regions to the list of Lithuanian place names. It was also decided to supplement the list of Lithuanian place names by adding, alongside the official form of the village name Bardinai, another form, also recognized as standard: Bardėnai; this form is given as the primary one.

The Onomastics Subcommission examined place names (of villages, rivers, parts of cities, and bridges), as well as problematic issues concerning the formation and shortening of personal names and surnames. Together with invited experts, it considered the transcription of place names from certain Asian languages, based on submissions by the editors of the dictionary Pasaulio vietovardžiai.

At joint meetings of the Onomastics and Grammar Subcommissions, provisions on the use of personal names from other languages in court documents were considered, and the tendencies in the use of such names identified in Lionginas Pažūsis’s monograph Kalba ir vertimas were discussed.

Lexicon. In view of the specific features of managing borrowed vocabulary, the procedure for standardizing borrowed vocabulary was revised: it will be standardized through the Kalbos patarimų books and recommendations adopted by protocol resolutions. At the same time, some loanwords were removed from the List of Major Language Errors, approved by Resolution No. 68 of 18 December 1997 (subparagraph 1.1, “Unacceptable foreign words and their derivatives,” and subparagraph 1.2, “Unacceptable new foreign words”). The assessment of the words in the List of Major Language Errors has not changed: they are still not recommended for standard language. These words were transferred to the Kalbos patarimų book Leksika: skolinių vartojimas (2013).

By protocol resolution No. PN-6, the List of Foreign Word Equivalents was expanded to include 40 names from the culinary, medical, and artistic fields borrowed from Japanese and relevant to current usage. Several dozen recommendations on equivalents for foreign words from various fields were added to the Consultation Bank.

The Dictionary Subcommission reviewed entries for the letters B, C, H, J, and O in the Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas.

Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation. At meetings of the temporary “Translation Guide” Subcommission, the final draft of Part I of the European Union Institutions’ Translation Guide was reviewed (published in 2014), as was the first draft of Part II.

Stress. Stress norms for some adverbs were clarified. The Pronunciation and Stress Subcommission considered problematic common words (submitted by the editors of the Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas) and proper names (submitted by the Citizens’ Names Research Group).

Textbook assessment. The Textbook Assessment Subcommission reviewed 15 manuscripts for general education textbooks—a total of 25 books (some textbooks have several parts). Seventeen books were immediately granted the mark certifying language correctness; four books were returned to publishers for revision; and four were manuscripts of textbooks being reissued, for which only comments were provided.

The language of 51 textbooks published by higher education institutions was assessed: the language of 2 textbooks met the requirements for correctness, while 19 textbooks met them in part (there are matters in the textbooks that need correction),

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The language of 30 textbooks did not meet the requirements for correctness; they contained major vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, and spelling errors.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

About 37,500 language consultations were provided during the year, including 15,240 online and about 22,300 by telephone. The State Enterprise Centre of Registers received 20,895 consultations via a dedicated electronic system on whether the names of legal entities complied with the norms of standard Lithuanian.

In 2014, 579 new entries were added to the Language Consultation Bank database (which now contains over 11,500 headwords).

A new subsite, pasaulio-vardai.vlkk.lt, was launched on the website of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. Transferred to it was the database of the first two volumes, Europa and Amerika, of Pasaulio vietovardžiai, a dictionary prepared by the Centre for Scientific and Encyclopaedia Publishing at the initiative of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. The subsite publishes the place names of 98 countries—about 70,000 place-name entries.

A working group comprising representatives of all university-level higher education institutions reviewed the curricula for the specialist language course taught at higher education institutions and submitted a revised version of the Specialist Language Programme (approved by a resolution recorded in the minutes).

In 2014, a study of the state of the Lithuanian language at higher education institutions, “The Language of Science,” was completed. Experts of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language assessed the language in 77 textbooks, 1,068 master’s theses, and the abstracts of 714 doctoral dissertations. It was found that the language of 66 percent of the textbooks did not meet the requirements for correctness, while as many as 38 percent of master’s theses and 17 percent of doctoral dissertation abstracts were classified as having a low level of literacy. The findings were presented at a meeting of the Conference of Rectors of Lithuanian Universities. Together with the Conference of Rectors, the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language appealed to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania, proposing a review of the Lithuanian language curricula in general education: to strengthen systematic Lithuanian language instruction and provide graduates of general education schools with the necessary foundations in Lithuanian.

The Research Council of Lithuania was asked to require the editors of reference books, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and other publications funded through its programmes to submit their terminology entries to the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language for evaluation and to publish them in the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, and to ensure that monographs, journals, and other scholarly publications funded through programmes run by the Research Council of Lithuania use correct language.

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania was once again asked to provide for measures to improve the language proficiency of teachers working in Lithuania’s general education system: when conducting external evaluations of school performance, to take into account the correctness of the language used to convey educational content; and to amend the teacher certification regulations so that all teachers undergoing recertification and seeking a higher qualification category update their knowledge of Lithuanian and complete a specialist language course.

The Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education was asked to include in its descriptions of levels of achieved study outcomes a provision on the ability to teach in correct Lithuanian and knowledge of the subject’s terminology.

At the beginning of the year, members of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language and the State Maturity Examination Assessment Commission discussed the guidelines for assessing language in Lithuanian language and literature final examination papers. These guidelines were used to assess students’ final papers in 2014.

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The Language Commission considered the language-teaching component of the draft Lithuanian language and literature curriculum for basic education. The curriculum’s authors were advised to expand the language component and to specify certain topics (syntax and punctuation) in greater detail.

On June 20, the Language Commission held a meeting to examine the current state of teaching Lithuanian as a foreign and state language, and of assessing achievement.

At the initiative of the Language Commission, and together with the Education, Science and Culture Committee of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, with support from the French Institute in Lithuania, an international conference, “State Language Policy: Insights and Guidelines,” was held at the Seimas on March 24. Guests from Estonia, Latvia, Denmark and France presented documents governing language policy in their countries, as well as certain aspects of their implementation.

On June 6, the annual conference of the Terminology Forum of the institutions and agencies of the European Union and the Republic of Lithuania (LTF) was held. The Language Commission was one of its organizers.

The National Dictation competition was held for the seventh time. More than 7,000 people took part in the first round; the dictation was written in all Lithuanian municipalities, at the Vilnius Book Fair, and at Lithuanian embassies abroad. The Language Commission is one of the partners of the public institution Pilietinės minties institutas, which organizes the dictation.

As a partner, the Language Commission took part in implementing the program “I CREATE THE LANGUAGE MYSELF!”, initiated by the Lithuanian School Students’ Union, which aimed to draw attention to a national problem: incorrect language use and declining literacy.

The organizers of the 7th National School Students’ Competition “Clean Language – A Clear Mind” received assistance, and contributions were made to organizing the competition “Little Dictation 2014,” in which fourth-grade pupils from Vilnius city schools took part.

Ten years ago, names containing distinctive letters of the Lithuanian alphabet began to be registered in the Lithuanian internet domain lt. To mark the anniversary, the Lithuanian Computer Society, together with the lt domain name registration service Domreg.lt, the Language Commission and the Infobalt association Infobalt organized a contest to choose the most beautiful name in the Lithuanian lt domain. A committee made up of representatives of these institutions selected 21 names and invited readers of the news portal Delfi.lt to choose the most beautiful one. The name of a kindergarten website, klaužada.lt, was voted the most beautiful.

The Commission collaborated with the creators of the Lithuanian Television program “Good Afternoon, Lithuania”: during the second half of the year, every other week, Language Commission staff introduced viewers to current language issues.

Received 2015 11 05

JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ

State Commission of the Lithuanian Language

Gedimino pr. 60, LT-01110 Vilnius

[email protected]

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