Kazimieras Būga ir lietuvių leksikografija

LTLietuvių leksikografijos istorija yra sudėtingos ir dažnai tragiškos mūsų kultūros istorijos dalis. Jau ketvirtas šimtmetis patys lietuviai ir kitataučiai jų bičiuliai (kartais ir priešai) rašo lietuvių kalbos žodynus. Vieniems žodynai buvo mokymosi priemonė. Kiti juos rašė norėdami geriau paaiškinti Biblijos žodžius. Dar kitiems lietuvių kalbos žodynas buvo mirštančios tautos ir kalbos paminklas. [...] K. Būga, dar ir vidurinės mokyklos baigimo atestato neturėjęs, buvo surinkęs jau kelis sąsiuvinius lietuvių kalbos žodyno medžiagos. 1902 m. žodyno medžiagą jis pradeda rašyti "nebe sąsiuviniais, bet kortelėmis". Ši data pagrįstai laikoma akademinio "Lietuvių kalbos žodyno" kartotekos pradžia. 1912 m. [Iš teksto, p. 1-2].

ENKazimieras Būga (1879-1924) was the first specialist in the Lithuanian language who lacked neither excellent training nor the knowledge of and feeling for his mother tongue. Būga’s life and the history of the Academic Lithuanian Dictionary are two things which are inseparable. In 1902 Būga, still a secondary school student, began to rewrite his collections of words on special slips. This date is considered to be the beginning of the card index of the Academic Lithuanian Dictionary. In 1912 Būga got his degree from the University of St. Petersburg and started preparing for a professorship in the department of comparative linguistics headed by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay. In 1918 he was granted the rank of professor. In 1920 Būga returned to Lithuania. He brought with him a large file of cards for his future dictionary. On May 13, 1923, Būga began to write the dictionary. He tried to record everything that was known up to that time about each word. In 1924 the first book of his dictionary was published. On December 2, 1924, Būga's untimely death was a tragedy for Lithuanian linguistics. In 1930 the Ministry of Education directed Juozas Balčikonis to continue Būga’s work. It was decided to increase as much as possible the card of index accumulated by Būga and to write the dictionary anew. In 1996 the seventeenth volume of the Academic Lithuanian Dictionary was published. All in all, there will be twenty volumes of the dictionary. The Academic Lithuanian Dictionary is the most important work of Lithuanian philology of our century. It has been prepared by several generations of Lithuanian linguists. But the greatest contribution to this work was made by Kazimieras Būga and Juozas Balčikonis.