Lithuanian (
lietuvių kalba) is the official state language of
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
and is recognized as one of the
official languageAn official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other territory. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
s of the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 Member States, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the pre-existing European Economic Community...
. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a
Baltic languageThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
, closely related to
LatvianLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
, although they are not mutually intelligible. It is written in an adapted version of the Roman script.
History
Lithuanian still retains many of the original features of the nominal morphology found in the common ancestors of the
Indo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
, and has therefore been the focus of much study in the area of
Indo-EuropeanThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
linguistics. Studies in the field of
comparative linguisticsComparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
have shown it to be the most conservative living Indo-European language.
Lithuanian and other Baltic languages passed through Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, during which Baltic languages developed numerous exclusive and non-exclusive lexical, morphological, phonological and accentual isoglosses with
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, which represent their closest living Indo-European relative. Moreover, with Lithuanian being so archaic in phonology, Slavic words can often be deduced from Lithuanian by regular sound laws.
According to some glottochronological speculations the Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between AD 400 and AD 600. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after AD 800; for a long period they could be considered dialects of a single language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th or 15th century, and perhaps as late as the 17th century. Also, the 13th- and 14th-century occupation of the western part of the
DaugavaThe river Daugava or Western Dvina or Dzvina , not to be confused with Northern Dvina, is a river rising in the Valdai Hills, Russia, flowing through Russia, Belarus, and Latvia, draining into the Gulf of Riga in Latvia, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The total length of the river is...
basin (closely coinciding with the territory of modern
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
) by the German Sword Brethren had a significant influence on the languages' independent development.
The earliest surviving written Lithuanian text is a translation dating from about 1503–1525 of the
Lord's PrayerThe Lord's Prayer, also known as the Our Father or Pater noster, is perhaps the best-known prayer in Christianity. On Easter Sunday 2007 it was estimated that 2 billion Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians read, recited, or sang the short prayer in hundreds of languages...
, the
Hail MaryThe Angelic Salutation, Hail Mary, or Ave Maria is a traditional Catholic prayer asking for the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Hail Mary is used within Roman Catholicism, and it forms the basis of the Rosary...
, and the
Nicene CreedThe Nicene Creed is the creed or profession of faith that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea by the first ecumenical council, which met there in 325...
written in the Southern Aukštaitijan dialect. Printed books existed after 1547, but the level of literacy among Lithuanians was low through the 18th century and books were not commonly available. In 1864, following the
January UprisingThe January Uprising was an uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Russian Empire...
,
Mikhail MuravyovCount Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov was one of the most reactionary Russian imperial statesmen of the 19th century...
, the Russian Governor General of Lithuania, banned the language in education and publishing,
and barred use of the Latin alphabetThe Lithuanian press ban was a ban on all Lithuanian language publications printed in the Latin alphabet within the Russian Empire, which controlled Lithuania at the time. Lithuanian-language publications that used the Cyrillic alphabet were allowed and even encouraged...
altogether, although books printed in Lithuanian continued to be printed across the border in
East PrussiaEast Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia...
and in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Brought into the country by
book smugglersBook smugglers were people who transported Lithuanian language books printed in the Latin alphabet into Lithuanian-speaking areas of the Russian Empire, defying a ban on such materials in force from 1866 to 1904...
despite the threat of stiff prison sentences, they helped fuel a
growing nationalist sentimentLithuanian National Revival, alternatively Lithuanian National Awakening , was a period of the history of Lithuania in the 19th century at the time when a major part of Lithuanian inhabited areas belonged to the Russian Empire...
that finally led to the lifting of the ban in 1904.
Jonas JablonskisJonas Jablonskis was a distinguished Lithuanian practical linguist and the founder of standard Lithuanian language...
(1860–1930) made significant contributions to the formation of the standard Lithuanian language. The conventions of written Lithuanian had been evolving during the 19th century, but Jablonskis, in the introduction to his
Lietuviškos kalbos gramatika, was the first to formulate and expound the essential principles that were so indispensable to its later development. His proposal for Standard Lithuanian was based on his native
Western AukštaitijaSuvalkija or Sudovia is the smallest of the five cultural regions of Lithuania. Its unofficial capital is Marijampolė. People from Suvalkija are called suvalkiečiai or suvalkietis . It is located south of the Neman River, in the former territory of Vilkaviškis bishopric...
n dialect with some features of the eastern
Prussian LithuaniansThe term Prussian Lithuanians, Lietuwininkai , Lietuvininkai refers to a Western Lithuanian ethnic group, which did not form a nation and inhabited East Prussia...
' dialect spoken in
Lithuania MinorLithuania Minor or Prussian Lithuania is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, later East Prussia in Germany, where Prussian Lithuanians or Lietuvininkai lived. Lithuania Minor enclosed the northern part of this province and got its name due to the territory's substantial...
. These dialects had preserved archaic phonetics mostly intact due to the influence of the neighbouring
Old Prussian languagePrussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of Prussia in an area of what later became East Prussia and eastern parts of Pomerelia...
, while the other dialects had experienced different
phonetic shiftA vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language.The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century....
s, however the most archaic features are found in the
South AukštaitijaDainava may refer to:*Dainava an alternative name for Dzūkija, Lithuanian region,*Dainava an elderate in Kaunas city....
dialect such as -tau, -tai usage instead of -chiau, -tum or
in instead of
į or the endings -on, -un instead of -ą, -ų. Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet occupation (see
History of LithuaniaThe history of Lithuania dates back to at least 1009, the first recorded written use of the term. Lithuanians later conquered neighboring lands, finally establishing the Kingdom of Lithuania in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained fiercely independent and was notably one of the...
), it was used in official discourse along with
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
which, as the official language of the
USSRThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, took precedence over Lithuanian.
Classification
Lithuanian is one of two living
Baltic languagesThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
, along with
LatvianLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
. An earlier
Old PrussianPrussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of Prussia in an area of what later became East Prussia and eastern parts of Pomerelia...
Baltic language was extinct by the 19th century; the other Western Baltic languages,
CuronianThe term Curonian language may refer to two different, but related Baltic languages.-Old Curonian:Traditionally Old Curonian refers to an extinct language spoken by the Curonian tribe, who lived mainly on the Courland peninsula and along the nearby Baltic shores.The language disappeared by the...
and
SudovianSudovian is an extinct western Baltic language in Northeastern Europe. Closely related to the Old Prussian language, it was formerly spoken southwest of the Nemunas river in what is now Lithuania, East of Galindia and North of Yotvingia, and as exiles in East Prussia...
, went extinct earlier. The
Baltic languagesThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
form their own distinct branch of the
Indo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
.
Geographic distribution
Lithuanian is spoken mainly in
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
. It is also spoken by ethnic Lithuanians living in today's
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
,
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and the
Kaliningrad OblastKaliningrad Oblast , informally called Yantarny kray is a federal subject of Russia situated on the Baltic coast. Population: 968,200 ; ....
of Russia, as well by sizable emigrant communities in
ArgentinaArgentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico,...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
,
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the fifth largest country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the fifth most populous country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean...
,
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
,
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
,
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
,
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
,
IcelandThe Republic of Iceland is a European island country located in the North Atlantic Ocean. It has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km². Its capital and largest city is Reykjavík, whose surrounding area is home to approximately two thirds of the national population...
,
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
,
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
,
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
proper,
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
, the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
UruguayUruguay , is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3.46 million people, of whom 1.1 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area. An estimated 88–94% of the population are of mostly European and/or mixed descent.Uruguay's only land border is...
,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
and
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
.
2,955,200 people in Lithuania (including 3,460
TatarsThe Lipka Tatars are a group of Tatars who originally settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the beginning of 14th century. The first settlers tried to preserve their shamanistic religion and sought asylum amongst the non-Christian Lithuanians....
), or about 80% of the 1998 population, are native Lithuanian speakers; most Lithuanian inhabitants of other nationalities also speak Lithuanian to some extent. The total worldwide Lithuanian-speaking population is about 4,000,000 (1993 UBS).
Official status
Lithuanian is the state language of Lithuania and an official language of the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 Member States, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the pre-existing European Economic Community...
.
Dialects
The Lithuanian language has two dialects (tarmės):
AukštaičiųAukštaitija is the name of one of five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. The name comes from the fact that the region is relatively elevated, particularly in its eastern parts.-Geography:...
(
AukštaitianAukštaitian dialect is one of the dialects of the Lithuanian language, spoken in ethnographic regions of Aukštaitija, Dzūkija and Suvalkija. It became the basis for the standard Lithuanian language.-Classification:...
, Highland Lithuanian),
Žemaičių/ŽemaitiuSamogitia is one of the five ethnographic regions of Lithuania.-Geography:The region is located in northwestern Lithuania in the territories of Palanga city municipality, Rietavas municipality, Tauragė district municipality, Šilalė district municipality, Skuodas district municipality, Jurbarkas...
(Samogitian, Lowland Lithuanian), See maps at
http://samogitia.mch.mii.lt/KALBA/girdstr.en.htm#Map. There are significant differences between standard Lithuanian and Samogitian. The modern Samogitian dialect formed in the 13th-16th centuries under the influence of the
Curonian languageThe term Curonian language may refer to two different, but related Baltic languages.-Old Curonian:Traditionally Old Curonian refers to an extinct language spoken by the Curonian tribe, who lived mainly on the Courland peninsula and along the nearby Baltic shores.The language disappeared by the...
. Lithuanian dialects are closely connected with
ethnographical regions of LithuaniaLithuania can be divided into historical and cultural regions . The exact borders are not fully clear, as the regions are not official political or administrative units. They are delimited by culture, such as country traditions, traditional lifestyle, songs, tales, etc. To some extent regions...
Dialects are divided into subdialects (patarmės). Both dialects have 3 subdialects. Samogitian is divided into West, North and South; Aukštaitian into West (Soduviečiai), South (Dainaviai) and East (South and East dielects form Dzūkian(Dzūkai) dialect due to intense usage of
dz sound instead of
dzh). Each subdialect is divided into smaller units - speeches (šnektos).
Standard Lithuanian is derived mostly from Western Aukštaitian dialects, including the Eastern dialect of
Lithuania MinorLithuania Minor or Prussian Lithuania is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, later East Prussia in Germany, where Prussian Lithuanians or Lietuvininkai lived. Lithuania Minor enclosed the northern part of this province and got its name due to the territory's substantial...
. Influence of other dialects is more significant in the vocabulary of standard Lithuanian.
Orthography
Lithuanian uses the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
supplemented with diacritics. It is composed of 32
letterA letter is an element in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Each letter in the written language is usually associated with one phoneme in the spoken form of the language....
s. The
collationCollation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetisation, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
order presents one surprise: "Y" occurs between "Į" (I nosinė) and "J" because "Y" represents a long vowel .
| A |
Ą |
B |
C |
Č |
D |
E |
Ę |
Ė |
F |
G |
H |
I |
Į |
Y |
J |
K |
L |
M |
N |
O |
P |
R |
S |
Š |
T |
U |
Ų |
Ū |
V |
Z |
Ž |
| a |
ą |
b |
c |
č |
d |
e |
ę |
ė |
f |
g |
h |
i |
į |
y |
j |
k |
l |
m |
n |
o |
p |
r |
s |
š |
t |
u |
ų |
ū |
v |
z |
ž |
The Lithuanian writing system is largely phonemic, i.e., one letter usually corresponds to a single
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
. Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions, for example, the letter
i represents either the vowel of English
lit or softens the preceding consonant (iu = ü, io = ö, etc.).
A
macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long syllable in Græco-Roman metrics, but now also indicates that the vowel is long...
can be used to mark and
vowel lengthIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English...
, and
acuteThe acute accent is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-History:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels....
,
graveThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, and other languages....
, and
tildeThe tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning a title or superscription, though the term “tilde” has evolved in that language and now has a different meaning in linguistics.It was originally written over a letter as a mark...
diacritics are used for
pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
. However, these are generally not written, except in dictionaries, grammars, and where needed for clarity. In addition, the following digraphs are used, but are treated as sequences of two letters for collation purposes. It should be noted that the "Ch" digraph represents a velar fricative, while the others are straightforward combinations of their component letters.
Dz dz [dz](dzė), Dž dž [dʒ](džė), Ch ch [x](cha).
Vowels
Lithuanian has 12 written vowels. In addition to the standard Roman letters, the
ogonekThe ogonek is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.-Use:...
('little tail') accent (conventionally known as the caudata) is used to indicate long vowels, and is a historical relic of a time when these vowels were nasalized (as ogonek vowels are in modern
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
), and at an even earlier time had made diphthongs with an 'n' sound (now done only in South Aukštaitijan dialects).
| Majuscule |
A |
Ą |
E |
Ę |
Ė |
I |
Į |
Y |
O |
U |
Ų |
Ū |
| Minuscule |
a |
ą |
e |
ę |
ė |
i |
į |
y |
o |
u |
ų |
ū |
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet ["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Consonants
Lithuanian uses 20 consonant characters, drawn from the Roman alphabet. In addition, the digraph "Ch" represents a
voiceless velar fricativeThe voiceless velar fricative, informally known as the hard ch, is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is x...
(
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
[x]); the pronunciation of other digraphs can be deduced from their component elements.
| Majuscule |
B |
C |
Č |
D |
F |
G |
H |
J |
K |
L |
M |
N |
P |
R |
S |
Š |
T |
V |
Z |
Ž |
| Minuscule |
b |
c |
č |
d |
f |
g |
h |
j |
k |
l |
m |
n |
p |
r |
s |
š |
t |
v |
z |
ž The grapheme Ž is formed from Latin Z with the addition of háček. It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative , including phonetic transcription. This sound is similar to English g in genre or Portuguese and French j...
|
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet ["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Consonants
| | labial | dental | alveo-
dental | alveolar | alveo-
palatal | velar |
|---|
| plosives | voiceless |
|---|
|
| |
|
|
|
| voiced |
|
| |
|
|
|
| fricatives | voiceless |
|---|
| |
| |
|
|
| voiced |
|
|
| |
|
|
| affricates | voiceless |
|---|
|
|
| |
| |
| voiced |
|
|
| |
| |
| nasal |
|
| |
|
|
|
| liquid | lateral |
|---|
|
| |
|
|
|
| glide |
| |
|
|
|
|
| rhotic trill |
|
|
|
| |
|
Each consonant listed above except is actually two:
palatalizedPalatalization or palatalisation generally refers to two phenomena:*As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;...
and non-palatalized ( - , - , - and so on). The consonants and their palatalized homologues are only found in
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
s. The consonants preceding vowels and are always moderately palatalized, a feature common to East Slavic languages and not present in the Latvian language.
Unreleased stopAn unreleased stop or unreleased plosive is a plosive consonant without an audible release burst. That is, the oral tract is blocked to pronounce the consonant, and there is no audible indication of when that occlusion ends...
s are common in the Lithuanian language over released plosives.
(Adapted from
http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_02.htm with necessary changes according to
Lithuanian Language Encyclopedia)
Vowels
Lithuanian has six long vowels and five short ones. Length has traditionally been considered the distinctive feature, though short vowels are also more centralized and long vowels more peripheral:
| | |Front | |Central | |Back |
|---|
| Long | Short | Long | Short |
|---|
| High |
|
| |
|
|
| Close-mid |
| |
|
|
|
| Low-mid |
|
| |
|
|
| Low |
|
|
| |
|
(Adapted from
http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_02.htm and
http://www.lituanus.org/1972/72_1_05.htm .)
Lithuanian is traditionally described as having eight
diphthongIn phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow...
s,
ai au ei eu oi ui ie uo. However, some approaches (i.e. Schmalstieg 1982) treat them as vowel sequences rather than diphthongs; indeed, the longer component depends on the type of stress, whereas in diphthongs the longer segment is fixed.
When not stressed, as in
ai , it is the second element of the sequence which is longer, . This is also the case with the stress written with a tilde,
aĩ . However, with the "acute" stress, it is the first element which is longer, in addition to the falling pitch:
ái , . The full set is as follows:
| | stressless
or tilde | acute stress |
|---|
| ai |
|
|
| ei |
|
| au |
|
|
| eu |
|
| ie |
|
|
| oi |
|
|
| ui |
|
|
| uo |
|
|
Pitch accent
Lithuanian prosodic system is characterized by free accent and distinctive quantity. Its accentuation is sometimes described as simple
toneTone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but...
system, often called
pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
. In lexical words, one syllable will be tonically prominent. A heavy syllable—that is, a syllable containing a long vowel,
diphthongIn phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow...
, or a
sonorantIn phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" or "spat out" is not a sonorant. For example, vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or...
coda—may have one of two tones,
falling tone (or
acute tone) or
rising tone (or
circumflex tone). Light syllables (syllables with short vowels and optionally also
obstruentAn obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants....
codas), do not have the two-way contrast of heavy syllables.
Common Lithuanian lexicographical practice uses three diacritic marks to indicate word accent, i.e. the tone and quantity of the accented syllable. They are used in the following way:
- The first (or the only) segment of a heavy syllable with a falling tone is indicated with an acute accent mark (e.g. á, ár), unless the first element is i or u followed by a tautosyllabic resonant, in which case it is marked with a grave accent mark (e.g. ìr, ùr).
- The second (or the only) segment of a heavy syllable with a rising tone are indicate with a circumflex accent (e.g. ã, ar̃)
- Short accented syllables are indicated with a grave accent mark (e.g. ì, ù).
As said, Lithuanian has a
free accent which means that its position and type is not phonologically predictable and has to be learned by heart. This is the state of affairs inherited from Proto-Balto-Slavic and, to a lesser extent, from
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
; Lithuanian circumflex and acute syllables directly reflect Proto-Balto-Slavic acute and circumflex tone opposition.
In a word-final position the tonal distinction in heavy syllables is almost neutralized, with a few minimal pairs remaining such as
šáuk "shoot!" vs.
šaũk "shout!". In other syllables the two-way contrast can be illustrated with pairs such as:
kóšė "porridge" vs.
kõšė "to sour";
áušta "to cool" vs.
aũšta "to come";
drímba "lout" vs.
drĩmba "to fall";
káltas "guilty" vs.
kãltas "chisel",
týre "(he/she) explored" vs.
tỹrė "mush".
kóšė is perceived as having a falling pitch ( or ), and indeed acoustic measurement strongly supports this. However, while
kõšė is perceived as having a rising pitch ( or ), this is not supported acoustically; measurements do not find a consistent tone associated with such syllables that distinguish them from unaccented heavy syllables. The distinguishing feature appears to be a negative one, that they do not have a falling tone.
If diphthongs (and truly long vowels) are treated as sequences of vowels, then a single stress mark is sufficient for transcription:
áušta = "to cool" vs.
aũšta = "to come";
kóšė = "porridge" vs.
kõšė = "to sour".
Lithuanian accentual system inherited another very important aspect from Proto-Balto-Slavic period, and that is the accentual mobility. Accents can alternate throughout the inflection of word by both the syllable position and type. Parallels can be drown with some modern Slavic languages, namely
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. Accentual mobility is prominent in nominal stems, while verbal stems mostly demonstrate phonologically predictable patterns.
Lithuanian nominal stems are commonly divided into four accentual classes, usually referred to by their numbers:
- Accent paradigm 1: Fixed (columnar) accent on a non-desinential syllable. If the accent is on a pre-desinential syllable, it carries the acute tone.
- Accent paradigm 2: Alternation of accent on a short or circumflex pre-desinential syllable with desinential accentuation.
- Accent paradigm 3: Alternation of accent on a non-desinential syllable with desinential accentuation. If the accent is on a pre-desinential syllable, it caries the acute tone.
- Accent paradigm 4: Alternation of accent on short or circumflex pre-desinential syllable with desinential accentuation.
| number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
|
caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. Usually a language is said to "have cases" only if nouns change their form to reflect their case. Others indicate cases in...
|
Accent paradigm 1 |
Accent paradigm 2 |
Accent paradigm 3 |
Accent paradigm 4 |
| sg In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
|
N The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments....
|
výras |
rankà |
galvà |
diẽvas |
| V The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
|
výre |
rañka |
gálva |
diẽve |
| A The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
|
výrą |
rañką |
gálvą |
diẽvą |
| G In grammar, the genitive case is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
|
výro |
rañkos |
galvõs |
diẽvo |
| D The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book"....
|
výrui |
rañkai |
gálvai |
diẽvui |
| L Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
|
výre |
rañkoje |
galvojè |
dievè |
| I The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
|
výru |
rankà |
gálva |
dievù |
| pl In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
|
N The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments....
VThe vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
|
výrai |
rañkos |
gálvos |
dievaĩ |
| A The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
|
výrus |
rankàs |
gálvas |
dievùs |
| G In grammar, the genitive case is the case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
|
výrų |
rañkų |
galvų̃ |
dievų̃ |
| D The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book"....
|
výrams |
rañkoms |
galvóms |
dieváms |
| L Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
|
výruose |
rañkose |
galvosè |
dievuosè |
| I The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
|
výrais |
rañkomis |
galvomìs |
dievaĩs |
It should be noted that the described accentual system primarily applies to the
Aukštaitian dialectAukštaitian dialect is one of the dialects of the Lithuanian language, spoken in ethnographic regions of Aukštaitija, Dzūkija and Suvalkija. It became the basis for the standard Lithuanian language.-Classification:...
on which the standard Lithuanian literary language is based on. The speakers of other group of Lithuanian dialects - Žemaitian - have very different accentual system, and they do not adopt standard accentuation when speaking the standard idiom. Speakers of the major cities such as
VilniusVilnius Vilnius Vilnius as of 2008. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the...
,
KaunasKaunas Kaunas Kaunas and Vilnius-Klaipėda (A1)...
and
KlaipėdaKlaipėda is a city in Lithuania situated at the mouth of the Curonian Lagoon where it flows into the Baltic Sea. As Lithuania's only seaport, it has ferry terminal connections to Sweden and Germany...
with mixed population generally do not have intonational oppositions in spoken language, even when they speak the standard idiom.
Change and variation
The
changesSound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
and variation in Lithuanian phonetics include diachronic changes of a quality of a
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
,
alternationsIn linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant...
, dialectal variation, variation between corresponding sounds of individual inflectional
morphemeIn morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...
s of the same
grammatical categoryA grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural]...
, which is at the same time qualitative and quantitative, diachronic and synchronic.
- The diachronic qualitative phonemic changes include o ← ā (a narrowing of a more open vowel), uo ← ō turnings.
- Among examples of the variation between sounds of different inflectional morpheme
In morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...
s of a certain grammatical categoryA grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural]...
there is historical shortening of a declensional endingDeclension in the Lithuanian language is quite sophisticated in a way similar to declensions in ancient Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit, Latin or Ancient Greek. It also is one of the most complicated declension systems among modern Indo-European and modern European...
a in some positions: motina (nom. sg.-instr. sg.) 'mother' ← *mātina ← *mātinā, *mātinās → motinos (gen. sg.). Synchronous variation between shorter (more recent) and longer (more archaic) personal endings in verbs, depending on final position: keliu 'I am lifting; I lift (something)' – keliuosi 'I get up; I am getting up' (reflexive); keli 'you are lifting' – keliesi 'you get up'; keliame 'we are lifting' – keliamės 'we get up'.
- Examples of alternation
In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant...
include variation between d, t and palatalized dž, č respectively: nom. sg. pat-s 'myself; himself; itself' (masculine gender), gen. sg. pat-ies, dat. sg. pač-iam; jaučiu 'I feel', jauti 'you feel'; girdžiu 'I hear', girdi 'you hear'. Variation between a lengthened, uttered in a falling, lengthened tone and a short a and e alike (only if these sounds end a syllable), variation between a long, uttered in a falling, lengthened tone and a short i at an ending of a word, depending on accentual position: vãkaras nominative 'an evening', vakarè locative 'in the evening'; radinỹs nom. 'a finding, a find', rãdinio genitive (from ràsti 'to find'); pãtiekalas 'a dish, course', patiekalaĩ nom. plural. (from patiẽkti 'to serve (a dish)'); vèsti 'to lead; to marry' vedìmas (a noun for an action) vẽdamas (participle) 'who is being led; married'; baltinỹs 'cloth which is being whitened', baltìnis 'white; (dial.) white of the egg' (derivatives from baltas 'white').
Variation in sounds takes place in word formation. Some examples:
| infinitive |
present tense,
I person,
singular |
past tense,
I person,
singular |
a noun of
an action |
other noun |
related short
nouns |
related short
adjectives |
meaning (for an infinitive) |
| rasti |
randu
I am finding;
I find |
radau
I found |
radimas
a finding |
|
|
|
to find |
| busti |
bundu |
budau |
budimas |
|
|
budrus vigilant |
to wake |
| pulti |
puolu |
puoliau |
puolimas |
|
pulkas a regiment |
|
to begin (on); to attack |
| pilti |
pilu |
pyliau |
pylimas |
pylimas a mound,
an embankment |
pilis a castle
pilvas a belly |
pilnas full |
to pour (any non solid material) |
| kilti |
kylu |
kilau |
kilimas |
|
kelias a road
kelis a knee
kalva a hill
kalnas a mountain |
kilnus noble |
to arise, lift (for oneself) |
kelti
|
keliu |
kėliau |
kėlimas |
|
|
to raise, lift (something) |
| svirti |
svyru |
svirau |
svirimas |
|
|
|
to slope |
| sverti |
sveriu |
svėriau |
svėrimas |
|
svoris a weight |
|
to weigh |
| gerti |
geriu |
gėriau |
gėrimas |
gėrimas a drink,
a beverage |
|
|
to drink |
| durti |
duriu |
dūriau |
dūrimas |
|
|
|
to prickle, job |
| vyti |
veju |
vijau |
vijimas |
|
vytis a chaserThe coat of arms of Lithuania, consisting of an armor-clad knight on horseback holding an olden sword and shield, is also known as Vytis . The Lithuanian coat of arms is one of the oldest national coat of arms in Europe...
pavojus a danger, alert |
|
to chase; to strand, wind |
| visti |
vysta (III p.) |
viso (III p.) |
visimas |
|
|
visas all, entire |
to breed (for oneself) |
| veisti |
veisiu |
veisiau |
veisimas |
|
vaisius a fruit
vaistas a drug |
|
to rear, to breed (something) |
| vysti |
vysta (III p.) |
vyto (III p.) |
vytimas |
|
|
|
to fade, wither, languish |
The examples in the table are given as an overview, the word formation comprises many words not given here, for example, any verb can have an adjective made by the same pattern: sverti – svarus 'valid; ponderous'; svirti – svarùs 'slopable'; vyti – vajùs 'for whom it is characteristic to chase or to be chased'; pilti – pilùs 'poury'; but for example visti – vislùs 'prolific' (not visus, which could conflict with an adjective of a similar form visas 'all, entire'). Many verbs, besides a noun derivative with the ending -ìmas, can have different derivatives of the same meaning: pilti – pylìmas, pylà, pỹlis (they mean the act of the verb: a pouring (of any non solid material)); the first two have meanings that look almost identical but are drawn apart from a direct link with the verb: pylimas 'a bank, an embankment', pylà 'pelting; spanking, whipping'; the word svõris 'a weight', for example, does not have the meaning of an act of weighing. There are also many other derivatives and patterns of derivation.
Grammar
The Lithuanian language is a highly inflected language in which the relationships between parts of speech and their roles in a sentence are expressed by numerous inflections.
There are two
grammatical genderIn linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
s in Lithuanian - feminine and masculine. There is no neuter gender per se, but there are some forms which are derived from the historical neuter gender, notably attributive adjectives. There are five
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
and three
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent...
declensionIn linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as number , case , gender, and possession. Declension occurs in a great many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many European languages, but is much less...
s.
Nouns and other parts of nominal morphology are declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative,
accusativeThe accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
,
instrumentalThe instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
,
locativeLocative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
, and
vocativeThe vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
. In older Lithuanian texts three additional varieties of the locative case are found:
illativeIllative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian would be "a házba" . An example from Estonian would be "majasse" and "majja" , formed from "maja"...
,
adessiveIn Finno-Ugric languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, the adessive case is the fourth of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "on". For example, Estonian laud and laual , Hungarian asztal and asztalon...
and
allativeAllative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages...
. The most common are the
illativeIllative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian would be "a házba" . An example from Estonian would be "majasse" and "majja" , formed from "maja"...
, which still is used, mostly in spoken language, and the
allativeAllative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages...
, which survives in the standard language in some idiomatic usages. The adessive is nearly extinct. These additional cases are probably due to the influence of Finno-Ugric languages with which Baltic languages have had a long-standing contact (Finno-Ugric languages have a great variety of noun cases a number of which are specialised locative cases).
Lithuanian has a free, mobile stress, and is also characterized by
pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
.
The Lithuanian verbal morphology shows a number of innovations. Namely, the loss of synthetic passive (which is hypothesized based on the more archaic though long-extinct Indo-European languages), synthetic perfect (formed via the means of reduplication) and aorist; forming subjunctive and imperative with the use of suffixes plus flexions as opposed to solely flections in , e. g., Ancient Greek; loss of the optative mood; merging and disappearing of the -t- and -nt- markers for third person singular and plural, respectively (this, however, occurs in Latvian and Old Prussian as well and may indicate a collective feature of all Baltic languages).
On the other hand, the Lithuanian verbal morphology retains a number of archaic features absent from most modern Indo-European languages (but shared with Latvian). This includes the synthetic formation of the future tense with the help of the -s- suffix; three principal verbal forms with the present tense stem employing the -n- and -st- infixes.
There are three
verbkalleah hit meIn syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice...
al
conjugationIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
s. All verbs have
presentThe present tense is the tense that may be used to express:* action at the present* a state of being;* an occurrence in the near future; or* an action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present....
,
pastThe past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past of the current moment , or prior to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future ....
,
past iterativePast iterative tense is a grammatical tense in the Lithuanian language, which denotes complete iterative action in the past as opposed to past tense with the meaning of non-iterative or progressive one....
and
futureIn grammar, the future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:Languages can employ various...
tenseTense may refer to:*Grammatical tense, a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs...
s of the indicative mood,
subjunctiveIn grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in dependent clauses to express wishes, commands, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or statements that are contrary to fact at present. It is sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood, as it often follows a...
(or
conditionalThe conditional mood is the form of the verb used in conditional sentences to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
) and
imperativeThe imperative mood is a grammatical mood that expresses direct commands or requests. It is also used to signal a prohibition, permission or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
moodGrammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar...
s (both without distinction of tenses) and
infinitiveIn grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
. These forms, except the infinitive, are conjugative, having two singular, two plural persons and the third person form common both for plural and singular. Lithuanian has the richest
participleIn linguistics, a participle is a derivative of a non-finite verb, which can be used in compound tenses or voices, or as a modifier...
system of all Indo-European languages, having participles derived from all tenses with distinct active and passive forms, and several gerund forms.
In practical terms, the rich overall inflectional system renders word order less important than in more
isolating languageIn morphological typology , an isolating language is any language in which words are composed of a single morpheme...
s such as English. A Lithuanian speaker may word the English phrase "a car is coming" as either "atvažiuoja automobilis" or "automobilis atvažiuoja".
Lithuanian also has a very rich word derivation system and an array of diminutive suffixes.
The first prescriptive grammar book of Lithuanian was commissioned by the Duke of Prussia, Frederick William, for use in the Lithuanian-speaking parishes of East-Prussia. It was written in
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
and German by
Daniel KleinDaniel Klein was a Lutheran pastor and scholar from Tilsit, Duchy of Prussia, who is best known for writing the first grammar book of the Lithuanian language....
and published in
KönigsbergKönigsberg was the capital of eastern Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945. It was founded by the Teutonic Knights just south of the Sambian peninsula in the year 1255 AD during the Northern Crusades and named for King Ottokar II of Bohemia...
in 1653/1654. The first scientific
Compendium of Lithuanian language was published in German in 1856/57 by
August SchleicherAugust Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language...
, a professor at
PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Nicknames for Prague have included "the mother of cities" , "city of a hundred spires", or Stověžatá Praha in Czech and "the golden city" or Zlaté město in Czech.Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the...
University. In it he describes Prussian-Lithuanian which later is to become the "skeleton" (Buga) of modern Lithuanian.
Today there are two definitive books on Lithuanian grammar: one in English, the "Introduction to Modern Lithuanian" (called "Beginner's Lithuanian" in its newer editions) by Leonardas Dambriūnas, Antanas Klimas and William R. Schmalstieg, and another in Russian, Vytautas Ambrazas' "Грамматика литовского языка" ("The Grammar of the Lithuanian Language"). Another recent book on Lithuanian grammar is the second edition of "Review of Modern Lithuanian Grammar" by Edmund Remys, published by Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Chicago, 2003.
Vocabulary
Indo-European vocabulary
Lithuanian is considered one of the most conservative modern Indo-European languages. This conservativism becomes especially apparent when Lithuanian is compared to a Germanic or a Romance language, as languages of these groups have greatly simplified their inflectional systems or levelled out declension altogether. Slavic languages are, on the other hand, more similar to Lithuanian.
Lithuanian retains
cognateCognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.An example of cognates within the same language would be English shirt and skirt, the former from Old English scyrte, the latter loaned from Old Norse skyrta, both from the same Common Germanic *skurtjōn-. Words with this type...
s to many words found in classical languages, such as
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
and Latin. These words are descended from
Proto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
. A few examples are the following:
- Lith. and Skt. sūnus (son)
- Lith. and Skt. avis and Lat. ovis (sheep)
- Lith. dūmas and Skt. dhumas and Lat. fumus (smoke)
- Lith. antras and Skt. antaras (second, the other)
- Lith. vilkas and Skt. vrkas and Lat. lupus (wolf)
- Lith. ratas and Lat. rota (wheel) and Skt. rathah (carriage).
- Lith. senis and Lat. senex (an old man) and Skt. sanah (old).
- Lith. vyras and Lat. vir (a man) and Skt. vira (man, hero).
- Lith. angis and Lat. anguis (a snake in Latin, a species of snakes in Lithuanian)
- Lith. linas and Lat. linum (flax, compare with English 'linen')
- Lith. ariu and Lat. aro (I plow)
- Lith. jungiu and Lat. iungeo (I join)
- Lith. gentys and Lat. gentes (tribes) and Skt. jánas (genus, race).
- Lith. mėnesis and Lat. mensis and Skt masa (month)
- Lith. dantys and Lat. dentes and Skt dantas (teeth)
- Lith. naktys and Lat. noctes and Skt. nakt (night)
- Lith. sėdime and Lat. sedemus (we sit) and Skt. siedati (sits).
This even extends to grammar, where for example Latin noun declensions ending in
-um often correspond to Lithuanian
-ų. Many of the words from this list share similarities with other Indo-European languages, including English.
On the other hand, the numerous lexical and grammatical similarities between Baltic and
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
suggest an affinity between these two language groups. However, there exist a number of Baltic (particularly Lithuanian) words, notably those that are similar to Sanskrit or Latin, which lack counterparts in Slavic languages. This fact was puzzling to many linguists prior to the middle of the 19th century, but was later influential in the re-creation of the Proto Indo-European language. In any event, the history of the earlier relations between Baltic and Slavic languages and a more exact genesis of the affinity between the two groups remains in dispute.
Loan words
In a 1934 book entitled
Die Germanismen des Litauischen. Teil I: Die deutschen Lehnwörter im Litauischen, K. Alminauskis found 2,770 loan words, of which about 130 were of uncertain origin. The majority of the loan words were found to have been derived from the
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
, Belarussian, and
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
languages, with some evidence that these languages all acquired the words from contacts and trade with
PrussiaPrussia was a historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries this state had substantial influence on German and European history...
during the era of the
Grand Duchy of LithuaniaThe Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an Eastern and Central European state from the 12th /13th century until 1795. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the pagan Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija...
. Loan words comprised about 20% of the vocabulary used in the first book printed in the Lithuanian language in 1547,
Martynas MažvydasMartynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas (1510 near Žemaičių Naumiestis (now in Šilutė district municipality) - May 21, 1563 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) was the author and the editor of the first printed book in the Lithuanian language....
's
CatechismA catechism is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
. The majority of loan words in the 20th century arrived from the
Russian languageRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
. Towards the end of the 20th century a number of
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
words and expressions entered the spoken vernacular of city dwellers, especially the younger ones.
The Lithuanian government has an established language policy which encourages the development of equivalent vocabulary to replace loan words. However, despite the government's best efforts to avoid the use of loan words in the Lithuanian language, many English words have become accepted and are now included in Lithuanian language dictionaries. In particular, words having to do with new technologies have permeated the Lithuanian vernacular, including such words as:
-
- monitorius (vaizduoklis) (computer monitor)
- faksas (fax)
- kompiuteris (computer)
- failas (rinkmena) (electronic file)
It is estimated that the number of foreign words, particularly of a technical nature, that have been adapted to the Lithuanian language might reach 70% or more.
Other common foreign words have also been adopted by the Lithuanian language. Some of these include:
-
- taksi (taksis) (taxi)
- pica (pizza)
- alkoholis (alcohol)
These words have been modified to suit the grammatical and phonetic requirements of the Lithuanian language, but their foreign roots are obvious.
Examples
lietuvių
lietuvis (masculine), lietuvė (feminine)
- Hello (informally): labas
- Goodbye (informally): iki!
- Please: prašau
- Thank you: ačiū
- That one: tas (masculine), ta (feminine)
- How much (does it cost)?: kiek kainuoja?
- Yes: taip
- No: ne
- Sorry: atsiprašau
- I don't understand: nesuprantu
- Do you speak English?: Kalbate angliškai?
- Where is ...?: Kur yra ...?
- Tea: arbata
- Coffee: kava
- Milk: pienas
- How much? : Kiek?
- Example : pavyzdys
- Examples : pavyzdžiai
External links