LOTYNŲ–LIETUVIŲ KALBŲ ŽODYNĖLIS SAPŪNO IR ŠULCO GRAMATIKOJE
LATIN-LITHUANIAN GLOSSARY IN THE 1673 LITHUANIAN GRAMMAR BY SAPŪNAS AND SCHULTZ

Summary/Abstract: A short grammar of Lithuanian, written in Latin and published in 1673 in Koenigsberg, referred to as the Compendium, was written by Kristupas Sapūnas (in German known as Christoph Sappuhn) and published by Theophilus Schultz (in Lithuanian known as Teofilis Šulcas). It has been a consensus among scholars that Schultz, to whom Sapūnas had bequeathed his unpublished manuscript, published it, years after the death of the original author, with his own additions; yet, in the absence of the original manuscript, it is not always clear what exactly these additions are. Almost all Lithuanian words mentioned in the Compendium are accompanied with Latin translations; and thus we have a de facto Lithuanian-Latin glossary consisting of 1380 entries. Most of the words are translated well, but the peculiarities of the translation of certain Lithuanian grammatical forms suggest that the translator had to mentally translate them into German first before producing the Latin version; also, certain similar-sounding or homonymous Lithuanian words, which could not have presented any difficulty for a native speaker, seem to have confused the translator. From this a conclusion can be drawn that in the original manuscript by Sapūnas (who was beyond doubt a native speaker of Lithuanian) the Lithuanian words had no accompanying Latin translations, and that these were added by Schultz (who was a Germanophone Prussian). Yet, despite these minor shortcomings inevitable with a non-native speaker, Schultz must be commended for his work in preserving for the posterity this interesting document on Lithuanian as it was spoken in Lithuania Minor in the 17th century.

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