Lithuanian language

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

History

First Lithuanian book (1547) The Simple Words of Catechism by Martynas Mažvydas

"Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant." - Antoine Meillet

Lithuanian still retains many of the original features of nominal morphology of the common ancestors of the Indo-European languages and has therefore been the focus of much study in the area of Indo-European linguistics. There is evidence to suggest the existence of a Balto-Slavic language group after the breakup of Proto-Indo-European, with the Slavic and Baltic languages then splitting perhaps around the 10th century BC. However, this is disputed by some linguists. While the possession of many archaic features is undeniable, the exact manner by which the Baltic languages have developed from the Proto-Indo-European language is not clear.

The Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between 400 AD and 600. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800, with a long period of being different dialects of one language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century, and perhaps as late as the 17th century. Also, the 13th- and 14th-century occupation of the western part of the Daugava basin (almost coinciding with the territory of modern Latvia) by German Sword Brethren had a significant influence on the languages' independent development.

The earliest surviving written Lithuanian text is a hymnal translation from around 1503-1525. Printed books exist from 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 Uprising, Mikhail Muravyov, the Russian Governor General of Lithuania, banned the language in education and publishing, and barred use of the Latin alphabet altogether, although books printed in Lithuanian continued to be printed across the border in East Prussia and in the United States. Brought into the country by book smugglers despite stiff prison sentences, they helped fuel growing nationalist sentiment that finally led to the lifting of the ban in 1904. Jonas Jablonskis (1860-1930) greatly contributed to the formation of the standard Lithuanian language. This language was already on its way in 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 the western High-Lithuanian dialect. Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet occupation (see History of Lithuania), it was used in official affairs alongside Russian which, as the official language of the USSR, took precedence over Lithuanian.

Classification

Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages (along with Latvian). The Baltic languages form their own distinct branch of the Indo-European languages.

Geographic distribution

Lithuanian is spoken mainly in Lithuania. It is spoken also by native ethnic Lithuanians living in today's Belarus, Latvia, Poland, Russia. It is also spoken by emigrant communities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Uruguay and the United States.

2,955,200 in Lithuania (including 3,460 Tatar) or about 80% of the population (1998) are native Lithuanian speakers; most Lithuanian inhabitants of other nationalities also speak Lithuanian to some extent. The total population 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: Aukštaitian (Aukštaičių, Highland Lithuanian) and Samogitian (Samogitian, Žemaičių/Žemaitiu, Lowland Lithuanian). See maps at [1].

Standard Lithuanian is based on Western Aukštaitian. Intelligibility between Aukštaitian and Samogitian is considered difficult by most Lithuanians.

Sounds

Vowels

Lithuanian has 12 written vowels. In addition to the standard Roman letters, the ogonek accent 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 Polish) and even earlier followed by an 'n' sound.

Majuscule	A	Ą	E	Ę	Ė	I	Į	Y	O	U	Ų	Ū
Minuscule	a	e	ę	i	į	o	u	ų	ū
IPA

Consonants

Lithuanian uses 20 consonant characters, drawn from the Roman alphabet. In addition, the digraph "Ch" represents a velar fricative (IPA [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
IPA

Phonology

Consonants

		labial	dental	alveo- dental	alveolar	alveo- palatal	velar
plosives
	voiced
fricatives
	voiced
affricates
	voiceless
nasal
liquid
	glide
rhotic trill

All consonants (except /j/) have two forms: palatalized and non-palatalized.

The consonants and their palatalized versions are only found in loanwords.

(Adapted from http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_02.htm.)

Vowels

There are two possible ways to posit the Lithuanian vowel system. The traditional pattern has six long vowels and five short ones, with length as the distinctive feature:

	Front		Central	Back
	Long	Short		Long	Short
High
Mid
Mid-low
Low

(Adapted from http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_02.htm.)

However, at least one researcher suggests that a tense vs lax distinction 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.

	Front		Back
	Long	Short	Long	Short
High
Mid
Low	æ

(Adapted from http://www.lituanus.org/1972/72_1_05.htm.)

Grammar

Main article: Lithuanian grammar

.

The Lithuanian language is a highly inflected language where relationship between parts of speech and their roles in a sentence are expressed by numerous flexions.

There are two grammatical genders in Lithuanian - feminine and masculine. There is no neutral gender per se, however there are some forms which are derived from the historical neutral gender, notably attributive adjectives. It has a free, mobile stress and is also characterized by pitch accent.It has five noun and three adjective declensions and three verbal conjugations. All verbs have present, past, past iterative and future tenses of the indicative mood, subjunctive (or conditional) and imperative moods (both without distinction of tenses) and infinitive. 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 participle system of all Indo-European languages, having participles derived from all tenses with distinct active and passive forms, and several gerund forms. Nouns and other declinable words are declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. In older Lithuanian texts three additional varieties of the locative case are found: illative, adessive and allative. The most common are the illative, which still is used, mostly in spoken language, and the allative, which survives in the standard language in some idiomatic usages. The adessive is nearly extinct.

The first prescriptive grammar book of Lithuanian was written in Latin by Daniel Klein and published in Königsberg in 1653. The first scientific Compendium of Lithuanian language was published 1856/57 by August Schleicher, a professor at Prague University.

Today there are two definitive books on Lithuanian Grammar: in English - "Introduction to Modern Lithuanian" (called "Beginner's Lithuanian" in newer editions) by Leonardas Dambriūnas, Antanas Klimas and William R. Schmalstieg and in Russian - Vytautas Ambrazas' "Grammatika Litovskogo Jazyka" ("The Grammar of the Lithuanian Language").

Vocabulary

Lexical borrowings in the language

Purists strongly believe that foreign influence on their native language is a bad thing, and while the basic vocabulary of the Lithuanian language does not possess many loan words, there are some that are called senieji skoliniai (old loans) which were borrowed from close neighbours a long time ago. Such words include stiklas, "glass" (Slavic origin; cf. Russian "steklo"), muilas, "soap" (Slavic origin; cf. Russian "mylo"), gatvė, "street" ("gatvo", Slavic; "paved road", esp. in wetlands), spinta ("der Spind", German; a generic term for storage furniture, such as cupboard, wardrobe, bookcase, etc.). These words are not likely to be changed because of their antiquity. Other borrowed words are international words that can be found in many languages like telefonas, ciklas, schema etc. These words come from Latin or Ancient Greek and are not "dangerous" from the point of view of language purists (since those languages do not exist anymore). However, there are many words of foreign origin that have Lithuanian counterparts, and thus should not be used. Such words previously came from Russian in the past, but now that Lithuania has regained its independence in 1990, English is starting to have increasingly stronger influence over Lithuanian and many words have recently flooded the language (like dispenseris, hakeris or singlas). The influence of loan words is being discussed at present, but finding appropriate Lithuanian counterparts for these words is often a difficult job.

Indo-European vocabulary

Lithuanian is considered one of the more conservative modern Indo-European languages, and certain Lithuanian words are very similar to their Sanskrit counterparts. Words such as sūnus for son and avis for sheep are exactly the same, and many others differ only slightly such as dūmas for smoke (dhumas in Sanskrit), antras for second (antaras in Sanskrit) and vilkas for wolf (vrkas in Sanskrit). However, Lithuanian verbal morphology shows many innovations.

Lithuanian has some vocabulary items descended from the proto-language which are also attested also in Latin. Examples include the following words (Latin first, then the Lithuanian cognate): rota �" ratas (wheel), senex �" senis (an old man, compare English senile), vir �" vyras (a man), anguis �" angis (a snake in Latin, a species of snakes in Lithuanian), linum �" linas (flax, compare English 'linen'), aro �" ariu (I plow), iungo �" jungiu (I join), duo �" du (two), tres �" trys (three), septem �" septyni (seven), gentes �" gentys (tribes), mensis �" mėnesis (month), dentes �" dantys (teeth), noctes �" naktys (nights), sedemus �" sėdime (we sit) and so on. Many of words from the list share their similarity with other Indo-European languages including English (what is evident from the examples above too). But, despite frequent similarities in vocabulary, Lithuanian has many differences from Latin (and consequently from Romance languages, too). Notably, structural differences almost exclude the possibility of any hypothesis that one of the languages is a descendant of the other.

On the other hand, the numerous lexical and grammatical similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages suggest an affinity between these two language groups. However, there exist a number of Baltic (particularly Lithuanian) words (which are similar to Sanskrit or Latin) which lack counterparts in Slavic languages. This fact was puzzling for many linguists prior to the middle 19th century, but was later influential in the development of the Proto Indo-European language. However, 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.

Writing system

Like many of the Indo-European languages, Lithuanian employs a modified Roman script. It is composed of 32 letters. The collation order presents one surprise: "Y" is moved to occur between "Į" (I ogonek) and "J" because "Y" actually represents a prolonged vowel of "I" and is used instead of would-be I-macron.

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

ė

f

g

h

i

į

y

k

l

m

n

o

p

r

š

t

u

ų

ū

v

z

ž

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.

Ch	Dz	Dž
ch	dz	dž

Examples

*Lithuanian: Lietuviškai ("lietuvishkai", simplified Lithuanian transcription [])
*Hello (informally): labas ("lahbas", [lābas])
*Goodbye (informally): iki! ("iki'", [iki])
*Please: prašau ("prashau", [])
*Thank you: ačiū ("ahchjooh", [])
*That one: tas (masculine), ta (feminine) ("tas, ta")
*How much (does it cost)?: kiek kainuoja? ("kjek kainuoja", [kĭek kain�"oja])
*Yes: taip ([taĭp])
*No: ne ("ne")
*Sorry: atsiprašau ("Atsiprashau", [])
*I don't understand: nesuprantu ([nesuprantu])
*Do you speak English?: (ar) kalbate angliškai? ([/ar/ ?])
*Where is ...?: Kur yra? ([kur īra?])

See also

* Martynas Mažvydas
* Swadesh list of Lithuanian words
* Lithuanian dictionaries

External links

*Lithuanian linguistics
*Learning Lithuanian in an online Lithuanian school
*Ethnologue report for Lithuanian
* Pages and Forums on the Lithuanian History
* Diacritics Project �" All you need to design a font with correct accents
*Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian
*The Historical Grammar of Lithuanian language
* Lithuanian English Dictionary from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition
*Online Searchable Dictionary - searchable
*Lithuanan and Slovenian language with Japanese translation

bat-smg:Lietuviu kalba

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