From to , Lithuania was independent and literature flourished. After the country became independent from Russia in , Lithuanian literature once again began to flourish. Modern Lithuanian is written with a modified Roman alphabet consisting of 32 letters. Palatalization before back vowels is marked by the vowel i which has no phonetic value. Since consonants are automatically palatalized before front vowels, they have no special marking for palatalization. Toggle navigation. Lithuanian Labas — Hello.
Labio- dental. Language Difficulty. How difficult is it to learn Lithuanian? Lithuanian is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. Languages A-Z. Select Language. Tibetic Languages. Tok Pisin. Arabic Egyptian Spoken. Arabic Levantine. Arabic Modern Standard. Arabic Moroccan Spoken. Arabic Overview. Bashkort Bashkir. Haitian Creole. Hawaiian Creole. Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia. Irish Gaelic.
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However, any official government texts e. Christmas greetings projected under Vilnius castle tower alternates Lithuanian, English, Polish and Russian languages. The Russian language was both mandatory and ubiquitous during the Soviet occupation , making virtually everybody in the older generations i. Nowadays, however, many ethnic Lithuanians regard the Russian language as a "colonial leftover". Likewise, Russian public inscriptions have been gradually removed or replaced by English ones although the Russian language may still be seen on an occasional old plaque or in unrenovated museums.
On the other hand, private hotels and restaurants have Russian menus and employ Russian-speakers to cater for numerous Russian tourists.
While to some ethnic Lithuanians any use of Russian is a reminder of the tragic history, some others enjoy Russian music and media, claiming that "culture and politics should not be mixed". English is the most popular foreign language to learn today.
The older generations are unlikely to speak English, however, as very few schools taught it seriously under the Soviet occupation. As the "top language" of the "prestigious West", it also became fashionable for some key local trademarks and popular songs.
It is relatively rare for non-Poles to learn Polish as a foreign language. It is not taught as such in schools. Polish signs for tourists are available in the areas most visited by the Polish tourists, namely the Vilnius region and the borderland. Polish-inhabited areas have Polish cultural events and media, although they are mostly aimed at the local Poles. Today German usually competes with Russian for the place of second foreign language in school after English.
In terms of cultural impact, German is far behind English, Russian and Polish, however: there is no local German media, few cultural events, few books for sale and so on. Diagram by Lithuanian department of statistics.
Lithuanian language belongs to the Baltic group of the Indo-European languages. The only other Baltic language is Latvian. Since the 19th century, numerous linguists regard Lithuanian language as the purest surviving Indo-European language which is least changed by outside influences.
A couple thousand years ago Baltic languages were spoken in a much larger area, covering also large areas of today's Poland, Russia, and Belarus. This area shrunk due to Slavic expansion and also due to the Germanic crusades that have destroyed the Old Prussian language. The Baltic area continued to shrink in 15thth centuries as the Baltic languages, including Lithuanian, continued to be spoken mainly by peasants whereas the nobility switched to German or Polish depending on location , regarded to be more prestigious.
The 19th century National Revival restored the prestige of speaking the Baltic languages. Peaceful resistance defended the language under Russian Imperial occupation when it was forbidden to print Lithuanian or to speak Lithuanian in public. Under the influence of linguist Jonas Jablonskis, the language was purified by replacing Slavic loanwords with neologisms and establishing the modern orthography. Due to this reason, 19th century Lithuanian differs more from modern Lithuanian than English of the era does differ from the modern English.
However, several centuries old Lithuanian is still intelligible for a modern person. The culmination of national revival was the declaration of Lithuanian independence, although the language had to survive another onslaught of Russification under the Soviet occupations of and During that time, many Russian loanwords entered the Lithuanian language, often unofficially every Lithuanian had to know and often speak in Russian, therefore, some of them began to include certain Russian words into their Lithuanian speech as well.
Post generations, however, are unlikely to use Russian words in Lithuanian sentences except for swearing and such words are increasingly considered "not cool". Since the 19th century, the Lithuanian language is regarded by many to be the primary definition of who is Lithuanian and who isn't. The importance of language in defining ethnicity is therefore much greater than in Britain or the USA where a person can easily be regarded to be Irish for example even if his native language is not Irish.
The decline of Lithuanian language and other Baltic languages over the centuries, stemmed by Lithuanian and Latvian national revivals and independence. Today Lithuanian is the sole official language in Lithuania and while there are official areas where ethnic minorities may use their own languages for instance as the medium of instruction in their public schools , the position of Lithuanian as a language for interethnic communication strengthened over the time since It remains to be seen whether this will be true in the future as the English language has displaced Lithuanian from many trademarks in the main cities and English slang entered the conversations.
The Lithuanian language commission which regulates the language takes a moderate stance on language purism. Unlike Icelandic, it allows new loanwords and Lithuanian has many older loanwords. However, it often attempts to coin neologisms for new terms, with mixed success. The Lithuanian as a Baltic language belongs to the Indo-European, one of the most widely-spoken language families in the world. The scholarly consensus is that Lithuanian is the language that has retained most of the features of the Protolanguage, i.
So, in fact, the diacritical marks are not a feature of antiquity. The Lithuanian language has many similarities with Sanskrit — the classical language of ancient India, e. Sanskrit is still used as a scholarly and liturgical language in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. It is not clear when the Lithuanian first began to be written.
In the long run, as the use of Polish increased due to the gradual Polonisation of the gentry during the 18 th century, the Polish language encroached in all fields, even becoming a threat to the role of spoken Lithuanian; but fortunately, the common people kept on speaking Lithuanian. The first known printed version of the Lithuanian alphabet is included in the book too.
It is true to say that isolated texts written in Lithuanian before this date are known to exist. If we rewrite this in normal Latin letters, we get:. Bralei seseris imkiet mani ir skaitikiet Ir tatai skaitidami permanikiet. Maksla schito tewai iusu trakszdawa tureti, Ale to negaleia ne wenu budu gauti. Broliai, seserys, imkit mane ir skaitykit Ir tatai skaitydami permanykit.
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