Lithuanian language

Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba) is the official language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 1,70,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language closely related to Latvian, though they are not mutually intelligible. Lithuanian is also spoken by ethnic Lithuanians living in Belarus, Latvia, Poland, and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, and by sizable emigrant communities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Spain.

Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages, along with Latvian. An earlier Old Prussian Baltic language was extinct by the 19th century; the other Western Baltic languages, Curonian and Sudovian, went extinct earlier. The Baltic languages form their own distinct branch of the Indo-European languages.

According to some 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. Transitional dialects existed until at least 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 Daugava basin 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 Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Nicene Creed 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 Uprising, the language was banned in education and publishing, and the use of the Latin alphabet was barred, although books in Lithuanian continued to be printed in East Prussia and in the United States. Brought into the country by book smugglers despite the threat of stiff prison sentences, they helped fuel a growing nationalist sentiment that finally led to the lifting of the ban in 1904.

Jonas Jablonskis (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 was the first to formulate and expound the essential principles that were indispensable to its later development. Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet occupation, it was used in official discourse along with Russian which took precedence over Lithuanian.

The Lithuanian language has two dialects: Aukštaičių (Aukštaitian, Highland Lithuanian), Žemaičių/Žemaitiu (Samogitian, Lowland Lithuanian). 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 language. Both dialects have 3 subdialects. Samogitian is divided into West, North and South; Aukštaitian into West, South, and East. Each subdialect is divided into smaller units - speeches.

Standard Lithuanian is derived mostly from Western Aukštaitian dialects, including the Eastern dialect of Lithuania Minor. Influence of other dialects is more significant in the vocabulary of standard Lithuanian.

Lithuanian uses the Latin alphabet supplemented with diacritics. It is composed of 32 letters: 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 phoneme. Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions. A macron can be used to mark and vowel length, and acute, grave, and tilde diacritics are used for pitch accent. 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: dz [dz](dzė), dž [dʒ](džė), ch [x](cha). It should be noted that the "Ch" digraph represents a velar fricative, while the others are straightforward combinations of their component letters.

Lithuanian retains cognates to many words found in classical languages, such as Sanskrit and Latin. Many of these words share similarities with other Indo-European languages, including English.

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 are a number of Baltic (particularly Lithuanian) words which lack counterparts in Slavic languages. This 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.

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. Most of the loan words were found to have been derived from the Polish, Belarussian, and German languages. The majority of loan words in the 20th century arrived from the Russian language. Towards the end of the 20th century a number of English language words and expressions entered the spoken vernacular of city dwellers, especially the younger ones.

Information: Wikipedia