Garbingas Antano Balašaičio jubiliejus

292 Languages and Culture | 84 AURELIJA GRITĖNIENĖ Lithuanian Language Institute Honorable aTaNo BalaŠaIo Jubilee On April 15, 2011, the dictionary writer and promoter of language culture Antanas Balašaitis turned 80 years old. On the occasion of the anniversary, an exhibition of the author’s works was held in the library of the Lithuanian Language Institute. The anniversary was beautifully celebrated in Jurbarkas at the Language Festival on April 27, where the linguist was congratulated and honored by a large group of locals. On December 10, 2016, the Art Gallery of Panevėžys presented the Petro Būtėnas Prize to Antanas Balašaitis. On this occasion, let us once again appreciate the numerous works of the anniversary and wish him the best health. antanas balašaitis was born on April 15, 1931 in Baenniai village (Jùrbarkas district). He grew up with three brothers. The older Peter Telviakas started attending elementary school in the autumn of 1937, and the younger Anton crossed the school threshold in the spring of 1938 having already learned capital letters (he learned them during the winter from the walls of the room painted with newspapers). After finishing elementary school, the two brothers walked five kilometers every day for seven years to Enžvilkas high school on the bank of the Šaltuonas river. After the war, the uncle gave the boys a bicycle left by the German soldiers, which was remembered (and if it broke down, it was repaired) by the older brother. During the war, the school was converted into a military hospital. The windows were broken, the walls were broken, everything was missing, and there were many children who wanted to learn, so we had to clean the windows, take care of the wood, and make the benches ourselves. Together with his brother, he made a high bench, put it at the back of the classroom and both sat on it until they graduated from high school (1949). second-grader a. balašaitis saw the first volume of the newly published great Lithuanian language dictionary for the first time in 1942 in the gymnasium. at that time the high school student did not even know that he would have to work on the other volumes of this Dictionary for 25 years. but the road to the Dictionary was still long. after finishing high school I had to work for a year in a three-year school (rietãvo r.). In 1952, he graduated from the Klaipėda Teachers’ Institute and spent two years at the secondary school in Kaneta (Kretinga district), where he taught Lithuanian language and worked as deputy principal. In 1953, the first publication of the author about this school appeared in the press. In 1956 he graduated from the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute. In the same year the Soviet Teacher published another article by him – “Thoughts on graduating from the institute”. From 1957 to 1960, he was an aspirant at the Lithuanian Language and Literature Institute. And then the feathers taken did not help – in Literatūra ir menas and other newspapers began to appear articles by A. Balašaitis about the Lithuanian language atlas being prepared, the new scientific grammar of the Lithuanian language being written, about linguistic conferences and trips to the areas of isolated Lithuanian dialects. In 1961, he began publishing in MA Darbai his own scientific articles on dialectology, phonetics and other terms from his dissertation History of Lithuanian Linguistic Terms, which he successfully defended in 1961. More than 300 typeset pages of the dissertation, another 80 pages were occupied by historical and alphabetical indexes of terms. The supervisor of the dissertation, Jonas Kruopas, saw how careful and diligent the aspirant was and therefore took care to include him in broader scientific activities – as early as 1959 he proposed to read a report at the Union conference of terminologists in Moscow, and two years later an article by A. Balašaitis was published in the journal Вопросы терминологии based on the report read. Then articles and articles poured out like from a horn of abundance. And not just about the deadlines. As a. balašaitis himself says, after becoming a “guardian of the language and customs of his parents for life”, he has to take care of the Lithuanian language and culture all the time (the last publication about the editing of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language Dictionary (1993) by Mokslo publishing house was published in the 2011 issue of Gimtosios kalbos, issue 11). and those language and culture problems have been and are all kinds. after completing his postgraduate studies a. balašaitis remained at the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature 294 Languages Culture | 84 toriuje. Initially, he wrote the texts himself (volumes VIII–XII), and from 1976 he began to edit the dictionary articles written by colleagues (he was a member of the editorial board of volumes XI–XIV). Together with other dictionaries, he prepared the supplemented and revised manual of the Lithuanian language dictionary (1963 and 1983). One of the first dictionaries began to organize word collection expeditions. Since 1958 he has provided the kartoteka with more than 20 000 recorded dictionary cards, visited more than 30 places not only in Lithuania, but also outside its borders (not a single word was brought from Zėtelė, Pelesė, Rodūnija, Kamójų dialects). He was delighted with every new volume of the Dictionary (he wrote about them in the periodicals Bibliotekų darbas, Naujos knygos, Pergalė, Lietuvos pionierius, Kalba Vilnius, Mokslas ir gyvenimas, Gimtasis kraštas, etc.). in the district newspapers wrote about the linguistic expeditions in Baisogala, Eržvilkas, Daugai and elsewhere. urged people not to depart from the folk language and to write words for the Dictionary, carefully counted the helpers of the Dictionary (articles were printed by Mūsų kalba, Kalbos kultūra, Tarybinis mokytojas, Kultūros barai, etc. ; A detailed word collection manual written by him was published in 1983 in the Language Facts Collection Program (pp. 129–139). He also worked on other dictionary works. with Jon Kruop and Kazimieras Gaivenis participated in the meetings of the Botanical Dictionary Commission. Together with Kazis Pakalka, he studied the watermarks of Konstantinas Sirvydas’s dictionary, and in 1976 both published an article on this subject in Baltistica. When K. Pakalka prepared K. Sirvydo’s Dictionarium trium linguarum for publication in 1979, A. Balašaitis immediately presented it in several publications (Pergalė, Soviet Teacher, Czerwony Sztandar wrote about it). Other dictionaries were also welcomed with annotations or reviews: Antonas Lyberis’s Dictionary of Synonyms, Vytautas Vitkauskas’s Dictionary of the North-Eastern Mudmen’s Snakes, Jon Petrauskas’s and Aloizas Vidugiris’s Dictionary of the Lazūnų dialect, the 3rd edition of the Dictionary of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, Chackelis Lemchen’s and Jon Macaitis’s Dictionary of the Russian-Lithuanian Languages, a. Vidugiris’s Dictionary of the Zietela Snakes, Vincentas Drotvinas’s Clavis Germanico-Lithvana and others (he wrote about them in Gimtasis kraštas, Naujojoje dienovidyje, Lietuvos aide and others). After starting to work at Mokslo publishing house, he edited several dictionaries himself: the 3rd edition of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language Dictionary, the Dictionary of Martynas Mažvydas’ writings, the Vidugiris Zietela’s schnekt dictionary. In 1984, he published a popular science booklet, Words and Dictionary, which briefly but informatively described the history of dictionaries, their types and kinds. The author has prepared a second edition of this sketch, which has been revised and substantially supplemented. It further describes the history and presentation of the academic dictionary. Grytviken. Honorable anniversary of antanas balašaitis 295 ta more information about the obstacles to the publication of his first volumes, the history of the archive. Other sections have also been expanded, and new facts about recent practical and scientific dictionaries have been added. let's hope that next year this book will reach readers. Speaking about the diverse activities of A. Balašaitis, it is necessary to mention his works dedicated to language culture. For 18 years (1971-1989) a. balašaitis was a member of the editorial board of Mūsų kalba. Since 1962, more than 100 of his articles were published in the newspapers Mūsų kalba, Kalbos kultūra, Literatūra ir menas, Žemės ūkis, Buitinė, district newspapers, etc., in which he raised various problems of the language and proposed ways of eliminating them. The author was particularly concerned about the Lithuanianness of terms, the meanings penetrating from Russian into our language and the foreignness of lexicon. The specific titles of the articles reveal how sincerely and devotedly they worked for the sake of the language: “For the use of the verbs get, take, assimilate” (Žemės ūkis, 1966, No. 9), “Are we pouring the sowing machine?” (Mūsų kalba, 1974, No. 5), “How do we translate terms” (Lithuanian language section workbook, 1969, No. 10), “Let’s name things correctly” (Buitis, 1970, No. 10), “For language culture” (Tarybinė mokykla, 1964, No. 8) and others. Several articles have been written about the language of school textbooks (mathematics, biology), even the language of kindergarten educational programs has been studied. Two language guidebooks for trade union workers were published (1978 and 1982). The public will be introduced to newly published publications on language standardization: Aldonas Pupkis’s Fundamentals of Language Culture (1980), the same author’s Language Practice Tips (1976 and 1985), Danguolė Mikulėnienė’s Dictionary of How Not to Speak (1991) and others. The jubilee never forgot his native land. In the summer of 1966 he participated in a local history expedition to Eržvilkas, and in the Eržvilkas monograph (1970) published a few years later he published two of his articles – “On the origin of the name Eržvilkas” (p. 196–197) and “The dialect of Eržvilkiškiai” (p. 180–187). Every few years he published articles on Eržvilkas: „Kraštotyrininkų ekspedicija Eržvilke“ (Kraštotyra, 1967), „Kas davė Eržvilkui vardą?“ (Švyturys, 1970, Nr. 21), „tau, brangi gimtine“ (Šviesa (Jurbarkas), 1970), „Ką mena Eržvilko apylinkės“ (Tiesa, 1971), „Pasipriešinimas okupantams Eržvilko gimnazijoje“ (Lietuvos aidas, 2001), „skaistutis Šveistys – Eržvilko gimnazijos absolventas“ (Profesorius Juozas Skaistutis Šveistys ir jo indėlis į gyvulininkystės mokslo sklaidą, 2009), „Kokie mes buvom, kokie sugrįžtam“ (about the meeting of Eržvilko gimnazijos IV laidos (1949) gymnasists after 60 years) (Šviesa (Jurbarkas), 2009). Like a real one 296 Languages Culture | 84 A patriot of his country cared not only for his native surroundings. Together with colleagues he prepared a collection of articles on local history (1966), wrote an annotation to Merkinė monograph (1971), with great love edited Juozas Maceika’s monograph on native lazūnai (1998). Since 1985, Balašaitis can also be called an encyclopedist. After starting work at Mokslo publishing house, he met many encyclopedias published there, he was always in a hurry to introduce them to readers (he wrote annotations on Children’s (1994), Cultural Monuments (1996), Agriculture (1998), Lithuanian Language (1999), Technology (2001), Lesser Lithuania (2010) encyclopedias. He wrote more than 20 articles for the Little Lithuania and the Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia, and the two-volume biographical guide Lithuanians in the United States of America (1998–2002) was supplemented by several hundred biographies written by A. Balašaitis. The author devoted a lot of time and heart to this work: not only he dedicated himself to writing biographies, but also went to Chicago to collect material in the archives, was one of the scientific editors of both volumes, the author of the “Preface” and the “Final Word”. I won’t count them anymore, just say that a whole bunch of books not mentioned here have been met with a. balašaitis’ reviews and annotations. How many publications have been edited, how many dissertations defended, anniversaries, conferences, events, expeditions have been described. It all settled into the Bibliography index. And the work is not over yet. So on the occasion of the honourable anniversary we wish the best health and strength, so that the hard-working hand will continue to work and the pen of the linguist taken 50 years ago will not dry up for a long time! Received 12/12/2011