In my last post, I listed the Russian words Kristina Sabaliauskaitė used in her article about the increasing presence of anglicizmai in Lithuanian. At the time, I only listed two, but the whole time a third has been sneaking around, though I don't know enough about lituanistika to know how obvious it is.

Anyway, in her overheard story about trying to get to Gatwick airport, the speaker says, "pralūzinau dešimt paundų dar net nedavažiavęs." If you look up "davažiuoti" in the DLKŽ, you will not find it. The "da-" prefix is not a Lithuanian, but rather a Slavic, one, like the Russian "до-," which means "up to" and "to the end." For example, "читать" (to read) becomes "дочитать" (to read up to a certain point). According to Lietuvių kalbos morfologija, there are 12 verb prefixes in Lithuanian: ap-, at-, iš-, į-, nu-, pa-, par-, per-, pra-, pri-, su-, and už-. No da-. VLKK even has a list of suggested alternatives to your favorite da- verbs (2.1.4).

Considering I grew up using words like "davažiuoti," "dabėgti," "dapilti," and so on (most notably, "daleisti," which for a speculative fellow like me is endlessly valuable), I wonder how pronounced the "wrongness" of the use of "da-" is, hence bringing up the question of whether Sabaliauskaitė used it in her story intentionally to further debase the quality of the language used by the storyteller.