Polish linguistic purism in Lithuania: the case of Aleksander Łętowski

ENWithin the general Polish-Lithuanian linguistic context, Łętowski's work stands in contrast to that of the Lithuanian grammarian Jonas Jablonskis in at least one important way. Jablonskis's proposed reforms of Lithuanian which included the removal of Slavicisms from the Lithuanian language, a puristic project similar to that of Łętowski were successful and widely adopted, whereas, Łętowski's efforts appear to have produced no significant effect. The researches of Turska into Lithuanian Polish, which were carried out ten to twenty years after the publication of Błędy nasze, show that the same errors which Łętowski had criticized so strongly were still an essential part of the local dialect. One reason for Łętowski's lack of success may have been his lack of specificity. The book, which lacks citations from written sources and is filled with comments along the lines of 'people say this' ('tak mowia'), appears to have been based very heavily on the spoken dialect of the region; and speakers are not necessarily readers and writers. It seems therefore likely that the book was ignored by its intended audience. Furthermore, at the time of its publication there did not exist an independent Polish government or educational system to deal with the problems identified by Łętowski. Thus, Błędy nasze stands as an example of ineffective purism, of a surgeon without a scalpel, or without the money to purchase necessary medical supplies. Łętowski's methods also give an insight into the problems of puristic methodology. To return to our surgical metaphor, this remedy 'suggests that we are able to distinguish that which should be retained from that which should be removed.But we have seen that Łętowski is inconsistent: he attacks loanwords from all languages, but is willing to accord linguistic 'citizenship rights' to such Germanisms as rachmistrz, kwit and handlowy. In the case of kwit he even prefers the Germanic term to an indubitably Slavonic rozpiska. Such a practice makes one wonder how far the logic of purism can go before it must yield to linguistic realities. [p. 612-613].