Lithuanian language

Lithuanian
lietuvių kalba
Native to	Lithuania
Native speakers	3.0 million (2012)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Baltic Eastern Baltic Lithuanian
Dialects	Samogitian, Aukštaitian
Writing system	Latin (Lithuanian alphabet) Lithuanian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Lithuania European Union
Recognised minority language in	Poland
Regulated by	Commission of the Lithuanian Language
Language codes
ISO 639-1	lt
ISO 639-2	lit
ISO 639-3	Either: lit – Modern Lithuanian olt – Old Lithuanian
Glottolog	lith1251
Linguasphere	54-AAA-a

Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba) is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.9 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 200,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, partially related to Latvian, however they are not considered mutually intelligible. It is written in a Latin alphabet. The Lithuanian language is often said to be the most conservative living Indo-European language, retaining many features of Proto-Indo-European now lost in other Indo-European languages.

History

Area of the Lithuanian language in the 16th century

The oldest surviving manuscript in Lithuanian (around 1503), rewritten from 15th century original text

A map of European languages (1741) with the first verse of the Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian

Distribution of the Baltic tribes, circa 1200 CE (boundaries are approximate).

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

— Antoine Meillet

Among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is extraordinarily conservative, retaining many archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. For this reason, it is one of the most important sources in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation (with the earliest texts dating only to c. 1500 AD). The phonology and especially the nominal morphology of Lithuanian is almost certainly the most conservative of any living Indo-European language, although its verbal morphology is less conservative and may be exceeded by the conservatism of Modern Greek verbs, which maintain a number of archaic features lacking in Lithuanian, such as the synthetic aorist and mediopassive forms.

The Proto-Balto-Slavic languages branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Proto-Baltic branched off into Proto-West Baltic and Proto-East Baltic. Baltic languages passed through a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, from which Baltic languages retain numerous exclusive and non-exclusive lexical, morphological, phonological and accentual isoglosses in common with the Slavic languages, which represent their closest living Indo-European relatives. Moreover, with Lithuanian being so archaic in phonology, Slavic words can often be deduced from Lithuanian by regular sound laws; for example, Lith. vilkas and Polish wilk ← PBSl. *wilkas (cf. PSl. *vьlkъ) ← PIE *wĺ̥kʷos, all meaning "wolf".

According to some glottochronological speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between AD 400 and AD 600. The Greek geographer Ptolemy had already written of two Baltic tribe/nations by name, the Galindai and Sudinoi (Γαλίνδαι, Σουδινοί) in the 2nd century AD. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after AD 800; for a long period, they could be considered dialects of a single language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until 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 (closely coinciding with the territory of modern Latvia) 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 Aukštaitian 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, 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 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, 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 his native Western Aukštaitijan dialect with some features of the eastern Prussian Lithuanians' dialect spoken in Lithuania Minor. These dialects had preserved archaic phonetics mostly intact due to the influence of the neighbouring Old Prussian language, while the other dialects had experienced different phonetic shifts. However, the most archaic features are found in the South Aukštaitija dialect, such as: -tau, -tai usage instead of -čiau, -tum; in instead of į; and the endings -on, -un instead of -ą, -ų. Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet era (see History of Lithuania), it was used in official discourse along with 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. An earlier Baltic language, Old Prussian, was extinct by the 18th century; the other Western Baltic languages, Curonian and Sudovian, became extinct earlier. Some theories, such as that of Jānis Endzelīns, considered that the Baltic languages form their own distinct branch of the family of Indo-European languages, but the most widely accepted opinion is the one that suggests the union of Baltic and Slavic languages into a distinct sub-family of Balto-Slavic languages amongst the Indo-European family of languages. Such an opinion was first represented by the likes of August Schleicher, and to a certain extent, Antoine Meillet. Endzelīns thought that the similarity between Baltic and Slavic was explicable through language contact while Schleicher, Meillet and others argued for a genetic kinship between the two families.

An attempt to reconcile the opposing stances was made by Jan Michał Rozwadowski. He proposed that the two language groups were indeed a unity after the division of Indo-European, but also suggested that after the two had divided into separate entities (Baltic and Slavic), they had posterior contact. The genetic kinship view is augmented by the fact that Proto-Balto-Slavic is easily reconstructible with important proofs in historic prosody. The alleged (or certain, as certain as historic linguistics can be) similarities due to contact are seen in such phenomena as the existence of definite adjectives formed by the addition of an inflected pronoun (descended from the same Proto-Indo-European pronoun), which exist in both Baltic and Slavic yet nowhere else in the Indo-European family (languages such as Albanian and the Germanic languages developed definite adjectives independently), and that are not reconstructible for Proto-Balto-Slavic, meaning that they most probably developed through language contact.

Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov believed in the unity of Balto-Slavic, but not in the unity of Baltic. In the 1960s, they proposed a new division, that into East-Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian), West-Baltic (Old Prussian), and Slavic. The Ivanov–Toporov theory is gaining ground among students of comparative-historic grammar of Indo-European language, and seems to be replacing the previous two stances in most P-I-E textbooks.

Geographic distribution

Lithuanian is spoken mainly in Lithuania. It is also spoken by ethnic Lithuanians living in today's Belarus, Latvia, Poland, and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, as well as by sizable emigrant communities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Spain.

2,955,200 people in Lithuania (including 3,460 Tatars), or about 80% of the 1998 population, are native Lithuanian speakers; most Lithuanian inhabitants of other nationalities also speak Lithuanian to some extent. The total worldwide Lithuanian-speaking population is about 3,200,000.

Official status

Lithuanian is the state language of Lithuania and an official language of the European Union.

Dialects

Dialects of Lithuanian. Samogitian subdialects are yellow, red, and brown; Aukštaitian subdialects are green, blue, and purple.

The Lithuanian language has two dialects (tarmės): Aukštaičių (Aukštaitian, Highland Lithuanian) and 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. Lithuanian dialects are closely connected with ethnographical regions of Lithuania.

Dialects are divided into subdialects (patarmės). Both dialects have three subdialects. Samogitian is divided into West, North and South; Aukštaitian into West (Soduviečiai), Dainavian and East (the South and East dialects are also known as Dzūkian dialects due to their frequent use of dz for standard dž). Each subdialect is divided into smaller units – speeches (šnektos).

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.

Orthography

Main article: Lithuanian orthography

See also: Lithuanian Braille

Lithuanian uses the Latin script supplemented with diacritics. It has 32 letters. In the collation order, y follows immediately after į (called i nosinė), because both y and į represent the same long vowel [iː]:

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital 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

Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small 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

In addition, the following digraphs are used, but are treated as sequences of two letters for collation purposes. The digraph ch represents a single sound, the velar fricative [x], while dz and dž are pronounced like straightforward combinations of their component letters (sounds):

Dz dz [dz] (dzė), Dž dž [dʒ] (džė), Ch ch [x] (cha).

The Lithuanian writing system is largely phonemic, i.e., one letter usually corresponds to a single phoneme (sound). There are a few exceptions: for example, the letter i represents either the vowel [ɪ], as in the English sit, or is silent and merely indicates that the preceding consonant is palatalized. The latter is largely the case when i occurs after a consonant and is followed by a back or a central vowel, except in some borrowed words (e.g., the first consonant in lūpa [ˈɫûːpɐ], "lip", is a velarized dental lateral approximant; on the other hand, the first consonant in liūtas [ˈlʲuːt̪ɐs̪], "lion", is a palatalized alveolar lateral approximant; both consonants are followed by the same vowel, the long [uː], and no [ɪ] can be pronounced in liūtas).

A macron (on u), an ogonek (on a, e, i, and u), and y (in place of i) are used for grammatical and historical reasons and always denote vowel length in Modern Standard Lithuanian. Acute, grave, and tilde diacritics are used to indicate pitch accents. However, these pitch accents are generally not written, except in dictionaries, grammars, and where needed for clarity, such as to differentiate homonyms and dialectal use.

Phonology

Main article: Lithuanian phonology

Consonants

	Labial		Dental		Palato- Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal	m mʲ		n̪ nʲ						ŋ ŋʲ
Stop	p pʲ	b bʲ	t̪ tʲ	d̪ dʲ			kʲ	ɡʲ	k	ɡ
Affricate			t̪͡s̪ t͡sʲ	d̪͡z̪ d͡zʲ	t͡ʃ t͡ʃʲ	d͡ʒ d͡ʒʲ
Fricative	(f fʲ)		s̪ sʲ	z̪ zʲ	ʃ ʃʲ	ʒ ʒʲ	(xʲ)	(ɣʲ)	(x)	(ɣ)
Liquid	v vʲ		ɫ lʲ		r rʲ		j

All Lithuanian consonants except /j/ have two variants: the non-palatalized one represented by the IPA symbols in the chart, and the palatalized one (i.e. /b/ – /bʲ/, /d/ – /dʲ/, /ɡ/ – /ɡʲ/, and so on). The consonants /f/, /x/, /ɣ/ and their palatalized variants are only found in loanwords.

Vowels

Lithuanian has six long vowels and five short ones (not including a disputed phoneme marked in brackets). Length has traditionally been considered the distinctive feature, though short vowels are also more centralized and long vowels more peripheral:

	Front		Central		Back
High	iː	ɪ			ʊ	uː
Mid	eː	(e)			ɔ	oː
Low	æː	ɛ	ɐ	aː

• /eː/ is close-mid [eː], whereas /e/ is mid [e̞]. Many, if not most speakers merge the latter vowel with the open-mid /ɛ/.

Diphthongs

Lithuanian is traditionally described as having nine diphthongs, ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou, ui, ie, and uo. However, some approaches (i.e., Schmalstieg 1982) treat them as vowel sequences rather than diphthongs; indeed, the longer component depends on the type of stress, whereas in diphthongs, the longer segment is fixed.

	stressless or tilde	acute stress
ai	[ɐɪ̯ˑ]	[ä̂ˑɪ̯]
ei	[ɛɪ̯ˑ]	[æ̂ˑɪ̯]
au	[ɒʊ̯ˑ]	[ä̂ˑʊ̯]
eu	[ɛʊ̯ˑ]	[ɛ̂ʊ̯]
iau	[ɛʊ̯ˑ]	[ɛ̂ˑʊ̯]
ie	[iə]	[îə]
oi	–	[ɔ̂ɪ̯]
ou	–	[ɔ̂ʊ̯]
ui	[ʊɪ̯ˑ]	[ʊ̂ɪ̯]
uo	[uə]	[ûə]

Pitch accent

Main article: Lithuanian accentuation

The Lithuanian prosodic system is characterized by free accent and distinctive quantity. Its accentuation is sometimes described as a simple tone system, often called pitch accent. In lexical words, one syllable will be tonically prominent. A heavy syllable—that is, a syllable containing a long vowel, diphthong, or a sonorant coda—may have one of two tones, falling tone (or acute tone) or rising tone (or circumflex tone). Light syllables (syllables with short vowels and optionally also obstruent codas) do not have the two-way contrast of heavy syllables.

Grammar

Main article: Lithuanian grammar

The Lithuanian language is a highly inflected language in which the relationships between parts of speech and their roles in a sentence are expressed by numerous inflections.

In Lithuanian, there are two grammatical genders for nouns – masculine and feminine, and there are three genders for adjectives, pronouns, numerals and participles: masculine, feminine and neuter. Every attribute has to follow the gender and the number of the noun. The neuter forms of other parts of speech are used with a subject of an undefined gender (a pronoun, an infinitive etc.).

There are twelve noun and five adjective declensions and one (masculine and feminine) participle declension.

Nouns and other parts of nominal morphology 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. These additional cases are probably due to the influence of Uralic languages with which Baltic languages have had a long-standing contact (Uralic languages have a great variety of noun cases, a number of which are specialised locative cases).

Lithuanian has a free, mobile stress, and is also characterized by pitch accent.

The Lithuanian verbal morphology shows a number of innovations. Namely, the loss of synthetic passive (which is hypothesized based on the more archaic though long-extinct Indo-European languages), synthetic perfect (formed via the means of reduplication) and aorist; forming subjunctive and imperative with the use of suffixes plus flexions as opposed to solely flections in, e. g., Ancient Greek; loss of the optative mood; merging and disappearing of the -t- and -nt- markers for third person singular and plural, respectively (this, however, occurs in Latvian and Old Prussian as well and may indicate a collective feature of all Baltic languages).

On the other hand, the Lithuanian verbal morphology retains a number of archaic features absent from most modern Indo-European languages (but shared with Latvian). This includes the synthetic formation of the future tense with the help of the -s- suffix; three principal verbal forms with the present tense stem employing the -n- and -st- infixes.

There are three verbal conjugations. The verb būti is the only auxiliary verb in the language. Together with participles, it’s used to form dozens of compound forms.

In the active voice, each verb can be inflected for any of the following moods:

1. indicative
2. Indirect
3. Imperative
4. Conditional / subjunctive

In the indicative mood and indirect moods, all verbs can have eleven tenses:

1. simple: present (nešu), past (nešiau), past iterative (nešdavau) and future (nešiu)
2. compound:

• present perfect (esu nešęs), past perfect (buvau nešęs), past iterative perfect (būdavau nešęs), future perfect (būsiu nešęs)
• past inchoative (buvau benešąs), past iterative inchoative (būdavau benešąs), future inchoative (būsiu benešąs)

The indirect mood, used only in written narrative speech, has the same tenses corresponding to the appropriate active participle in nominative case, e. g. past of the indirect mood would be nešęs, past iterative inchoative of the indirect mood would be būdavęs benešąs. Since it is a nominal form, this mood cannot be conjugated, but must match the subject’s number and gender.

The subjunctive (or conditional) and the imperative moods have three tenses. Subjunctive: present (neščiau), past (būčiau nešęs), inchoative (būčiau benešąs); imperative: present (nešk), perfect (būk nešęs) and inchoative (būk benešąs).

The infinitive has only one form (nešti). These forms, except the infinitive and indirect mood, are conjugative, having two singular, two plural persons and the third person form common both for plural and singular.

In the passive voice, the form number is not as rich as in the active voice. The are two types of passive voice in Lithuanian: present participle (type I) ant past participle (type II) (in the examples below types I and II are separated with a slash). They both have the same moods and tenses:

1. Indicative mood: present (esu nešamas/neštas), past (buvau nešamas/neštas), past iterative (būdavau nešamas/neštas) and future (būsiu nešamas/neštas)
2. Indirect mood: present (esąs nešamas/neštas), past (buvęs nešamas/neštas), past iterative (būdavęs nešamas/neštas) and future (būsiąs nešamas/neštas).
3. Imperative mood: present (type I only: būk nešamas), past (type II only: būk neštas).
4. Subjunctive / conditional mood: present (type I only: būčiau nešamas), past (type II only: būčiau neštas).

Lithuanian has the richest participle system of all Indo-European languages, having participles derived from all simple tenses with distinct active and passive forms, and two gerund forms.

In practical terms, the rich overall inflectional system makes the word order have a different meaning than in more analytic languages such as English. The English phrase "a car is coming" translates as "atvažiuoja automobilis", while "the car is coming" – "automobilis atvažiuoja" (word order inversion).

Lithuanian also has a very rich word derivation system and an array of diminutive suffixes.

The first prescriptive grammar book of Lithuanian was commissioned by the Duke of Prussia, Frederick William, for use in the Lithuanian-speaking parishes of East-Prussia. It was written in Latin and German by Daniel Klein and published in Königsberg in 1653/1654. The first scientific Compendium of Lithuanian language was published in German in 1856/57 by August Schleicher, a professor at Prague University. In it he describes Prussian-Lithuanian which later is to become the "skeleton" (Buga) of modern Lithuanian.

Today there are two definitive books on Lithuanian grammar: one in English, the "Introduction to Modern Lithuanian" (called "Beginner's Lithuanian" in its newer editions) by Leonardas Dambriūnas, Antanas Klimas and William R. Schmalstieg, and another in Russian, Vytautas Ambrazas' "Грамматика литовского языка" ("The Grammar of the Lithuanian Language"). Another recent book on Lithuanian grammar is the second edition of "Review of Modern Lithuanian Grammar" by Edmund Remys, published by Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Chicago, 2003.

Vocabulary

The Grand Dictionary of the Lithuanian language consists of 20 volumes and contains more than half a million headwords

Indo-European vocabulary

Lithuanian retains cognates to many words found in classical languages, such as Sanskrit and Latin. These words are descended from Proto-Indo-European. A few examples are the following:

• Lith. and Skt. sūnus (son)
• Lith. and Skt. avis and Lat. ovis (sheep)
• Lith. dūmas and Skt. dhūmas and Lat. fumus (fumes, smoke)
• Lith. antras and Skt. antaras (second, the other)
• Lith. vilkas and Skt. vṛkas (wolf)
• Lith. ratas and Lat. rota (wheel) and Skt. rathas (carriage).
• Lith. senis and Lat. senex (an old man) and Skt. sanas (old).
• Lith. vyras and Lat. vir (a man) and Skt. vīras (man).
• Lith. angis and Lat. anguis (a snake in Latin, a species of snakes in Lithuanian)
• Lith. linas and Lat. linum (flax, compare with English 'linen')
• Lith. ariu and Lat. aro (I plow)
• Lith. jungiu and Lat. iungo (I join)
• Lith. gentys and Lat. gentes (tribes) and Skt. jánas (genus, race).
• Lith. mėnesis and Lat. mensis and Skt masa (month)
• Lith. dantis and Lat. dentes and Skt dantas (teeth)
• Lith. naktis and Lat. noctes and Skt. naktis (night)
• Lith. ugnis and Lat. ignis and Skt. agni (fire)
• Lith. sėdime and Lat. sedemus (we sit) and Skt. sīdati (sits down).

This even extends to grammar, where for example Latin noun declensions ending in -um often correspond to Lithuanian -ų, with the Latin and Lithuanian fourth declensions being particularly close. Many of the words from this list share similarities with other Indo-European languages, including English.

On the one hand, the lexical and grammatical similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages suggest an affinity between these two language groups. On the other hand, there exist a number of Baltic (particularly Lithuanian) words without counterparts in Slavic languages, notably those that are similar to Sanskrit or Latin. This fact puzzled many linguists prior to the middle of the 19th century, but was later influential in the re-creation of the Proto Indo-European language. The history of the relationship between Baltic and Slavic languages, and our understanding of the affinity between the two groups, remain in dispute.

Loanwords

In a 1934 book entitled Die Germanismen des Litauischen. Teil I: Die deutschen Lehnwörter im Litauischen, K. Alminauskis found 2,770 loanwords, of which about 130 were of uncertain origin. The majority of the loanwords were found to have been derived from the Polish, Belarusian, and German languages, with some evidence that these languages all acquired the words from contacts and trade with Prussia during the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Loanwords comprised about 20% of the vocabulary used in the first book printed in the Lithuanian language in 1547, Martynas Mažvydas's Catechism. But as a result of language preservation and purging policies, Slavic loanwords currently constitute only 1.5% of the Standard Lithuanian lexicon, while German loanwords constitute only 0.5% of it. The majority of loanwords 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.

The Lithuanian government has an established language policy which encourages the development of equivalent vocabulary to replace loanwords. However, despite the government's best efforts to avoid the use of loanwords in the Lithuanian language, many English words have become accepted and are now included in Lithuanian language dictionaries. In particular, words having to do with new technologies have permeated the Lithuanian vernacular, including such words as:

• Monitorius (vaizduoklis) (computer monitor)
• Faksas (fax)
• Kompiuteris (computer)
• Failas (byla, rinkmena) (electronic file)

Other common foreign words have also been adopted by the Lithuanian language. Some of these include:

• Taksi (taxi)
• Pica (pizza)
• Alkoholis (alcohol)
• Bankas (bank)
• Pasas (passport, pass)

These words have been modified to suit the grammatical and phonetic requirements of the Lithuanian language, but their foreign roots are obvious.

Examples

• [In] Lithuanian: (adverb) lietuviškai

(language) lietuvių

Lithuanian (demonym) - lietuvis (male); lietuvė (female)

• Hello / hi - labas, sveikas (masculine), sveika (feminine); good afternoon - laba diena; good morning - labas rytas; good evening - labas vakaras; good night - labanakt
• Goodbye: iki, ate (both informally); viso gero (formally)
• Please: prašau
• Thank you: ačiū, dėkui
• That [one]: tas (masculine), ta (feminine), tai (neuter/general: it)
• How much (does it cost)?: kiek (kainuoja)?
• Yes: taip
• No: ne
• Sorry: atsiprašau
• I don't understand: nesuprantu
• Do you speak English?: Ar kalbate angliškai?
• What's your name?: Koks tavo (informally)/jūsų (more polite, venerating) vardas?
• Where is ...?: Kur yra ...?
• Shop: parduotuvė
• Tea: arbata
• Coffee: kava
• Milk: pienas
• Example: pavyzdys
• Examples: pavyzdžiai
• Photo: nuotrauka

Old Lithuanian

The language of the earliest Lithuanian writings, in the 16th and 17th centuries, is known as Old Lithuanian and differs in some significant respects from the Lithuanian of today.

Besides the specific differences given below, it should be noted that nouns, verbs and adjectives still had separate endings for the dual number. The dual persists today in some dialects. Example:

Case	"two good friends"
Nom-Acc	dù gerù draugù
Dat	dvı̇́em gerı̇́em draugám
Inst	dviem̃ geriem̃ draugam̃

Pronunciation

The vowels written ą, ę, į, ų were still pronounced as long nasal vowels, not as long oral vowels as in today's Lithuanian.

The original Baltic long ā was still retained as such, e.g. bralis "brother" (modern brólis).

Nouns

Compared to the modern language, there were three additional cases, formed under the influence of the Finnic languages. The original locative case had been replaced by four so-called postpositive cases, the inessive case, illative case, adessive case and allative case, which correspond to the prepositions "in", "into", "at" and "towards", respectively. They were formed by affixing a postposition to one of the previous cases:

• The inessive added -en to the original locative.
• The illative added -n(a) to the accusative.
• The adessive added -pie to the original locative.
• The allative added -pie to the genitive.

The inessive has become the modern locative case, while the other three have disappeared. Note, however, that the illative case is still used occasionally in the colloquial language (mostly in the singular): Lietuvon "to Lithuania", miestan "to the city". The interesting thing about this form is its relative productivity. For instance, it is not uncommon to hear "skrendame Niujorkan (we are flying to New York)".

The uncontracted dative plural -mus was still common.

Adjectives

Adjectives could belong to all four accent classes in Old Lithuanian (now they can only belong to classes 3 and 4).

Additional remnants of i-stem adjectives still existed, e.g.:

• loc. sg. didimè pulkè "in the big crowd" (now didžiame)
• loc. sg. gerèsnime "better" (now geresniamè)
• loc. sg. mažiáusime "smallest" (now mažiáusiame)

Additional remnants of u-stem adjectives still existed, e.g. rūgštùs "sour":

Case	Newer	Older
Inst sg	rūgščiù	rūgštumı̇̀
Loc sg	rūgščiamè	rūgštumè
Gen pl	rūgščių̃	rūgštų̃
Acc pl	rū́gščius	rū́gštus
Inst pl	rūgščiaı̇̃s	rūgštumı̇̀s

No u-stem remnants existed in the dative singular and locative plural.

Definite adjectives, originally involving a pronoun suffixed to an adjective, had not merged into a single word in Old Lithuanian. Examples:

• pa-jo-prasto "ordinary" (now pàprastojo)
• nu-jie-vargę "tired" (now nuvar̃gusieji)

Verbs

The Proto-Indo-European class of athematic verbs still existed in Old Lithuanian:

	'be'	'remain'	'give'	'save'
1st sg	esmı̇̀	liekmı̇̀	dúomi	gélbmi
2nd sg	esı̇̀	lieksı̇̀	dúosi	gélbsi
3rd sg	ẽst(i)	liẽkt(i)	dúost(i)	gélbt(i)
1st dual	esvà	liekvà	dúova	gélbva
2nd dual	està	liektà	dúosta	gélbta
1st pl	esmè	liekmè	dúome	gélbme
2nd pl	estè	liektè	dúoste	gélbte
3rd pl	ẽsti	liẽkt(i)	dúost(i)	gélbt(i)

The optative mood (i.e. the third-person imperative) still had its own endings, -ai for third-conjugation verbs and -ie for other verbs, instead of using regular third-person present endings.

Syntax

Word order was freer in Old Lithuanian. For example, a noun in the genitive case could either precede or follow the noun it modifies.

See also

• Lithuanian dictionaries
• Martynas Mažvydas
• Samogitian dialect

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Leonardas Dambriūnas, Antanas Klimas, William R. Schmalstieg, Beginner's Lithuanian, Hippocrene Books, 1999, ISBN 0-7818-0678-X. Older editions (copyright 1966) called "Introduction to modern Lithuanian".
• Remys, Edmund, Review of Modern Lithuanian Grammar, Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Chicago, 2nd revised edition, 2003.
• Klimas, Antanas. "Baltic and Slavic revisited". Lituanus vol. 19, no. 1, Spring 1973 . Retrieved 23 October 2007. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |work= (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• Zigmas Zinkevičius, "Lietuvių kalbos istorija" ("History of Lithuanian Language") Vol.1, Vilnius: Mokslas, 1984, ISBN 5-420-00102-0.
• Remys, Edmund, General distinguishing features of various Indo-European languages and their relationship to Lithuanian, Indogermanische Forschungen, Berlin, New York, 2007.

External links

• Baltic Online (part of Early Indo-European Online) – Lithuanian and Old Lithuanian grammar
• Online Lithuanian-English, English-Lithuanian dictionary
• Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian
• The Historical Grammar of Lithuanian language
• 2005 analysis of Indo-European linguistic relationships
• Lithuanian verbs training
• Lithuanian verbs test