| Abstract [eng] |
Rendering place-name (names of towns, rivers, lakes) of Lithuania in Latvian has been investigated in both theoretical and practical aspects; however, the region of Northern Lithuania was chosen as the fi rst attempt to review the usage of place-names of a narrower territory more thoroughly. The aim of the research is to fi nd out the tendencies of the usage of Northern Lithuania place-names and how Latvian readers are acquainted with these localities. Comparative and analytical descriptive methods were employed for the research. Various non-fiction texts, mostly publications issued in Latvia and Lithuania for tourists, both written in Latvian and translated into Latvian, were chosen as sources. There are no many place-names of Northern Lithuania in Latvian texts, and their diversity is poor; however, publications for tourists include more diverse place-names, not only those of cities, rivers or other objects. The material was divided and discussed according to semantic groups: 1) names of regions; 2) names of towns and other settlements; 3) names of water bodies. Variations of alphabet (rendering a grapheme i marking palatalisation) and grammatical changes, e.g. many town names (of masculine gender in Lithuanian) were made nouns of feminine gender in Latvian, have been discussed. In general, place-names of Northern Lithuania are usually Latvianised according to the rules. However, the tendency to write a place-name in brackets in Lithuanian besides names of little-known, smaller or other objects is noticed. Also, not matching provisions of dictionaries and/or incorrectly rendered place-names of North Lithuania were found. Several such inaccuracies could be considered as mistakes of proof; however, it seems that there are more cases of neglected rules of rendering. Sometimes there are unreasoned variations of forms (names of regions Ziemeļlietuva and Ziemeļu Lietuva, Aukštaitija and Augštaitija). |
