Fun facts about the Lithuanian language

It’s an extremely old language

Lithuanian is one of the, if not the the most, archaic Indo-European languages. According to French linguist, Antoine Meillet,” if you want to listen to how the ancient Indo-Europeans spoke, then you should visit a Lithuanian village and listen to the language of Lithuanian peasants” (Ramonienė, M and Stumbrienė, V., Complete Lithuanian). Speaking Lithuanian will whisk you back centuries ago. It’s like traveling back in time!

The Indo-European Connection

Lithuanian is similar to Latin, and Sanskrit, a classical version of the Indian language. It has retained much of its archaic elements, especially in grammar and vocabulary. Some notable and interesting facts about its language structure and form are the following:

There are many words similar to Latin and Sanskrit
There is no particular word order in Lithuanian
There are no articles (definite “the” or indefinite “a/an”) in Lithuanian
There are seven cases in Lithuanian which means that word endings determine its function in the sentence (accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, locative, nominative and vocative). Words are transformed according to the purpose it serves in a phrase (a noun, an adjective, an adverb, etc.) For instance, take the Lithuanian word for house, namas, in its dictionary form, the nominative case (noun). When used to refer to a location i.e. in the sentence I live at home: gyvenu namuose. Notice how the word ending in -as was transformed to -uose which now indicates a location (locative).
Nouns can either be masculine and feminine in Lithuanian, as is in several European languages. The noun endings will indicate whether a noun is masculine and feminine. Endings with -as, -is, -ys, -us are typical masculine endings. Endings with -a and -ė are typical feminine endings.

One of two surviving Baltic languages

Lithuanian is one of two surviving Baltic languages alongside Latvian. There once were three languages under this language branch but the old Prussian has long been dead. Lithuanians owe the survival of their language to book smugglers when the use of the Lithuanian language and books were banned during the Russian occupation in the 19th century. There are many monuments all over Lithuania that immortalize these book smugglers as statues.

Similarities to neighboring countries

Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Russian speakers have a certain level of understanding of Lithuanian due to historical circumstances. However, without any formal studies, these languages are quite incomprehensible to one another. They can and are related to one another for many reasons: geographically, historically and linguistically. You can pretty much compare this to how some Spanish speakers are able to decipher a few words in Filipino (historical and linguistic ties) or how some words in Indonesian are similar to certain Filipino vocabularies (geographical and linguistic ties). Yet, we remain incomprehensible to one another without any formal training in each other’s languages.

Absence of swear words

One of my classmates once asked our professor to teach us some bad words. However, to our disappointment (more on amusement, actually), our professor said that there are no swear words in Lithuanian. When Lithuanians get extremely upset, they mutter Russian swear words instead.

Lithuanian as a State language

Lithuanian is the only state language of the Republic of Lithuanian. During the Soviet period, Russian was imposed on the public. This is why a huge part of their population still speak Russian. Lithuania regained its dependence from the Soviets in 1990. Their independence is protected by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and their state language is safeguarded by the Law on the State Language.

Dialects of Lithuanian

There are two major Lithuanian dialects which are Aukštaičių and Žemaičių. These two dialects can be vastly different from one another. In order for speakers of these dialects to communicate, they use the standard Lithuanian, which has only been established about 100 years ago.