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Lithuanian Language Facts:

Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native Lithuanians. The Lithuanian name for the language is Lietuvių kalba.

In older literature on Baltic languages, "Lithuanian" can sometimes refer to Baltic Languages in general.

History

The Lithuanian language still retains the original sound system and morphological peculiarities of the prototypal Indo-European language and therefore is fascinating for linguistic study. Between 400-600 AD, the Lithuanian and Latvian languages split from the Western Baltic (Prussian) language group, which subsequently became extinct. The first known written Lithuanian text dates from a hymnal translation in 1545. Printed books in Lithuanian language are known since 1547, but the level of literacy among Lithuanians were not big in 16th 18th centuries and number of books wasn't big too. Literacy in Lithuania strongly increased during the 19th century, despite victimization, made by Russian authorities (which reached its peak after suppression of January Uprising, in 1864 1904, when Russian officials forbade any public spoken usage of Lithuanian language and usage of Latin alphabet for written language).

Lithuanian has been official language in Lithuania since 1918 year. During Soviet period ( 1944 1990, see History of Lithuania), it was used in official affairs along with Russian language, which was official in the USSR and had priority over Lithuanian language.

Classification

Lithuanian is one of two (the other is Latvian) living Baltic languages, which is a separate branch of the Indo-European languages, but perhaps closest to the Slavic family.

Geographic distribution

Lithuanian is spoken mainly in Lithuania. It is also spoken in Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Kingdom, Uruguay, USA, and Uzbekistan.

2,955,200 in Lithuania (including 3,460 Tatar) or about 80% of the population (1998) speak Lithuanian. The population total speaking Lithuanian for all countries is 4,000,000 (1993 UBS).

Official status

Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania.

Dialects

The Lithuanian language has two main dialects: Aukshtaitish (Aukštaičių, Highland Lithuanian) and Zhemaitish (Samogitian, Žemaičių, Lowland Lithuanian).

Standard Lithuanian is based on Western Aukshtaitish. Intelligibility between Aukshtaitish and Zhemaitish is considered difficult by most Lithuanians. Second languages Russian and English are used with foreigners.

Grammar

There are two grammatical genders in Lithuanian. It has the free stress.

Each noun is declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. The 1st scientific Compendium of Lithuanian language was published 1856/57 by August Schleicher, a professor at Prague University.

Writing system

Like many of the Indo-European languages, Lithuanian employs modified Roman script. It is comprised of 32 letters. Collation order presents one surprise: "Y" is moved to occur between I Ogonek (Į) and J.

Acute, grave, and macron/tilde accents can be used to mark stress and vowel length. However, these are generally not written, except in dictionaries 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 compositions of their component letters.

However, at least one researcher suggests that a tense vs. lax distiction may be the actual distinguishing feature, or at least equally important as length. Such a hypothesis yields the chart below, where 'long' and 'short' have been preserved to parallel the terminology used above.

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