Interesting facts

It is possible to tell if a woman is married or not by the form of her family name, whereas this rule cannot be adapted for men. That is, unmarried women have family names with the endings "aitė", "iūtė" and "ytė" and married women's names always end with "ienė". A new ending "ė" has gained in popularity in recent years, which can be used either by married or by unmarried women. But it will take some time before it is widespread. At present it is used only by married women, mainly celebrities.

Interestingly, Lithuanian doesn’t have strong swear words. An example is rupūžė (toad). When Lithuanians feel the need to curse, they use either Russian or English swear-words.

Lithuanian is so suitable for dancing...

Three women went to Vilnius, Lithuania for the first time. After returning home they shared their experiences with a friend:
– Lithuanian is so musical, just like a dance...
– Why?
– Because every time a bus stops passengers say “Lipsi, lipsi, čia-čia-čia”…

“Lipsi, lipsi, čia-čia-čia” These are not dance names, but a shortened form of “ar Jūs lipsite čia?” (Are you getting off here?)

History

The oldest remaining text in Lithuanian was a prayer written by hand in a copy of the book “Tractatus sacerdotalis” in 1503.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lithuanian is one of two surviving Baltic languages, along with Latvian. Today the Lithuanian language is the most archaic of all living Indo-European languages. It is believed that among the modern languages Lithuanian is the closest to the Proto-Indo-European language.

"Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant," said the famous French linguist Antoine Meillet.

When specialists in Indo-European linguistics try to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language they find that contemporary Lithuanian is as important as ancient tongues such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

Paul Thieme in 1958 compared the Lithuanian proverb: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos ir duonos and its Latin translation Deus dedit dentes; Deus dabit et panem (‘God gave teeth, God will also give bread’) with what he (Thieme) calls an old form of Sanskrit: Devas adadā t datas; Devas dā t (or dadā t) api dhā nā s.

Sanskrit and the Lithuanian language

Since both Sanskrit and Lithuanian are very archaic, there is a number of related and similar words, with identical or very close meanings. For example:

In addition, similar language and its morphology: skr. asmi - asi - asti = lit. I am - you are - they are.

The language similarity is not due to their close relatives (Lithuanian language belongs to the Balto-Slavic languages and Sanskrit to Indo-Aryan), but due to the fact that both of these languages has retained much of Proto-Indo-European elements. Sanskrit as a liturgical language, hasn't changed since its creation, and the Lithuanian language on the historical and cultural contexts also changed relatively little.

Grammar

Lithuanian has only two numbers (singular and plural) and two genders (masculine and feminine).

Lithuanian has four tenses (Past, Past iterative, Present, Future) and three conjugations.

The past iterative tense refers to a recurring action in the past: imdavau ir skaitydavau (I used to decide and read (not once)).

There are 7 cases (Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Instr, Loc, Voc), five declensions for nouns and three declensions for adjectives in Lithuanian.

An adjective in Lithuanian language can have up to 147 forms: 2 genders x 6 cases x 2 numbers x 2 forms x 3 degrees of comparison + 3 forms with no gender.

Pronominal forms of adjectives are a special feature of Lithuanian. The pronominal form of an adjective denotes that the feature is particular and at the same time it emphasizes this feature: gražus – gražusis (beautiful – this beautiful). Pronominal forms of adjectives are unknown for English, German, French and many other language speakers.

Dialects

Source: Wikimedia Commons