NICKNAMES AS A FUN GAME FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Nicknames are like a fun game to help you learn languages without computer or Internet required. This way interacts with others in person while working your cognitive skills and building the vocabulary. Nicknames game suitable for children, adults, teachers and self learners. This game consists of diferent words meanings – direct and indirect – and the goal is to create a sentence that makes sense using only one of these meanings.

The paper analyses nicknames that were recorded at Veliuona vicinity during the project of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language “Modern Research of Geolinguistics in Lithuania: Optimisation of Network of Points and Interactive Spread of Dialectal Information”. The paper aims to identify the characteristic attributes of nickname semantics.

The semantics of nicknames, their origins and common connotations are examined in greater detail.

When analysing nickname semantics, the motives for nickname attribution and dictionary definitions are taken into account. Examining nicknames semantically, first of all, the basis for nickname derivation is determined, i. e. a proper word meaning the name of an individual object or an appellative meaning the generalised name of an object. Further on, nicknames are classified into smaller semantic groups.

The research has disclosed that the greater group of nicknames is comprised of appellatives which stand for a generalised name of an object, while nicknames made of proper names constitute the smaller group.