Lithuanian
Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers. The Lithuanian language still retains much of the original sound system and morphological peculiarities of the Indo-European language and therefore is fascinating for linguistic study. Some sources state that the Baltic language group has existed, distinct from Indo-European languages as early as the 10th century BC. Lithuanian and Latvian are the languages belonging to this language group.
A Lithuanian might say, depending what mood he is in, that he speaks a dialect of Sanskrit or ancient Greek. However, according to the science of philology, which seems to be mathematically precise, the Lithuanian language is the closest to the Indo-European parent language, the source of development of the rest of the languages. Thus, Lithuanian is older than any other language. It is not a sister of Latin; rather it is its older aunt.
The Lithuanian language has two main dialects: Auktaičių (Highland Lithuanian) and emaičių (Lowland/Samogitian Lithuanian). Lithuanian employs modified Roman script and its alphabet is comprised of 32 letters.
There are 12 written vowels in the Lithuanian alphabet. In addition to the standard Roman letters, the ogonek accent uses long vowels and represents a historical relic of a time when these vowels became nasalized e.g. ą, ę, į, ų.
Lithuanian uses 20 consonant characters which, like Lithuanian vowels, are also drawn from the Roman alphabet. The Lithuanian language has three consonant characters not used in English č, and .
To learn more about Lithuanian, visit
http://www.llti.lt
Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers. The Lithuanian language still retains much of the original sound system and morphological peculiarities of the Indo-European language and therefore is fascinating for linguistic study. Some sources state that the Baltic language group has existed, distinct from Indo-European languages as early as the 10th century BC. Lithuanian and Latvian are the languages belonging to this language group.
A Lithuanian might say, depending what mood he is in, that he speaks a dialect of Sanskrit or ancient Greek. However, according to the science of philology, which seems to be mathematically precise, the Lithuanian language is the closest to the Indo-European parent language, the source of development of the rest of the languages. Thus, Lithuanian is older than any other language. It is not a sister of Latin; rather it is its older aunt.
The Lithuanian language has two main dialects: Auktaičių (Highland Lithuanian) and emaičių (Lowland/Samogitian Lithuanian). Lithuanian employs modified Roman script and its alphabet is comprised of 32 letters.
There are 12 written vowels in the Lithuanian alphabet. In addition to the standard Roman letters, the ogonek accent uses long vowels and represents a historical relic of a time when these vowels became nasalized e.g. ą, ę, į, ų.
Lithuanian uses 20 consonant characters which, like Lithuanian vowels, are also drawn from the Roman alphabet. The Lithuanian language has three consonant characters not used in English č, and .
To learn more about Lithuanian, visit
http://www.llti.lt