Lithuanian language - Definition and Overview

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 much of the original sound system and morphological peculiarities of the prototypal Indo-European language and therefore is fascinating for linguistic study. Some reconstructions have even concluded that Lithuanian is the modern language which is most closely related to Proto-Indo-European (the speech of a Lithuanian peasant, for example, is probably the closest semblance you can get to the tongue spoken by the hypothetic Proto-Indo-European people). Some evidence suggests that the Baltic language group has existed, distinct from other Indo-European languages, since perhaps the 10th century BC. However, the exact manner by which the Baltic languages have developed from the Proto-Indo-European langage is disputed, though the possession of many archaic features is undeniable.

The Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones (or, perhaps, from hypothetic proto-Baltic language) between 400 – 600s. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800s with a period of being one language but different dialects, which perhaps lasted quite long. At least, transitive dialects existed till 14th – 15th or even 16th – 17th century. And after 13th – 14th centuries, the occupation of western part of Daugava basin (almost coinciding with the territory of modern Latvia) by German Sword Brethren had significant influence on the separate development of Lithuanian and Latvian.

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 was low in the 16th – 18th centuries and books were not easily available. 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. During the Soviet period (1944 – 1990, see History of Lithuania), it was used in official affairs along with Russian, which was official in the USSR and had priority over Lithuanian language.

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 also spoken in Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Britain, 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 and an official language of the European Union.

Dialects

The Lithuanian language has two main dialects: Aukshtaitish (Aukštaičių, Highland Lithuanian) and Zhemaitish (Samogitian, Žemaičių/Žemaitių, Lowland Lithuanian). See maps at [1] (http://samogitia.mch.mii.lt/KALBA/girdstr.en.htm#Map).

Standard Lithuanian is based on Western Aukshtaitish. Intelligibility between Aukshtaitish and Zhemaitish 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).

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.

Phonology

Consonants

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

(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:

(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.

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

Historical sound changes

Grammar

The main article is the 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. It has a free and mobile stress. It has 5 noun and 3 adjective declensions and 3 verbal conjugations. All verbs have present, past, past iterative and future tenses of the indicative mood, conditional and imperative moods (both without distinction of tenses) and infinitive. These forms, except the infinitive, are conjugative, having 2 singular, 2 plural persons and the 3rd person form common both for plural and singular. Nouns and other declinable words are declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, three types of locative, and vocative (nouns only).

The 1st scientific Compendium of Lithuanian language was published 1856/57 by August Schleicher, a professor at Prague University.

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 the closest neighbours a long time ago. Such words include stiklas, "glass" (Slavic origin; cf. Russian "steklo"), muilas, "soap" (Slavic origin; cf. Russian "mylo"), gatvė, "street" ("gatwo", Slavic; "paved road", esp. in wetlands), spinta ("die 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 ancienty. 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 1991, 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.

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.

See also

• Martynas Mažvydas

External links

Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the

Lithuanian language Wikipedia

• Lithuanian linguistics (http://www.lituanus.org/IndexLanguage.htm)
• Ethnologue report for Lithuanian (http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=LIT)
• Pages and Forums on the Lithuanian History (http://www.istorija.net/)