[1] Amongst his professors were Filipp Fortunatov and Fedor Yevgenievich Korsh, both of whom were familiar with Lithuanian and encouraged their students to research his native language.

Romanas was studying in preparation for the entrance exams to Jelgava Gymnasium and Smetona, being from a poor, farming background, needed the work.

The Russian Academy of Sciences charged Jablonskis with editing the dictionary compiled by the recently deceased Antanas Juška.

Since the Russian authorities prohibited the printing of Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet, his grammar was later published in Tilsit, East Prussia.

After the press ban was lifted in 1904, he served on the editorial boards of the newspapers Vilniaus žinios (Vilnius News) and Lietuvos ūkininkas (Lithuanian Farmer) and edited the publications of Aušra (The Dawn).Between 1906 and 1908 he taught at the Pedagogic Seminary of Panevėžys.

His most significant work, however, remains Lietuvių kalbos gramatika, which for a long time was the only comprehensive manual available to schools and general public.

The purification of the language was also helped by his frequent articles in periodicals, where he repeatedly pointed out unacceptable and non-Lithuanian grammatical and syntactical forms.

In addition, he translated popular science and educational works by various (M. Bogdanov, Ivan Krylov, Samuel Smiles, George Sand) authors.

The linguistic material which he collected was published in the 20 volumes of Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian and is still being used in research and in editing of texts and books.

[1] A complete edition of Jablonskis' works was prepared by Jonas Balčikonis and published as Jablonskio raštai, 5 volumes, Kaunas, 1932–36.