- Official language in
- Lithuania
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
Lithuanian is the state language of Lithuania: Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania states, "Lithuanian shall be the State language." According to Terje Mathiassen's grammar of Lithuanian, the language is spoken by roughly 3 million people in Lithuania, about 80% of the population, with most of the remaining inhabitants speaking Russian or Polish. Lithuanian is divided into two main dialect groups, Aukštaitic and Žemaitic; the modern standard language was formed in the second half of the 19th century on the basis of a West Aukštaitic dialect.
Sources
- Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania (1992, as amended) — Article 14
- Mathiassen, Terje (1996). "A Short Grammar of Lithuanian." Slavica Publishers — Chapter 0, Introduction, p. 20 (population share; Aukštaitic/Žemaitic dialects; standard language)
Script & pronunciation
Lithuanian is written in the Latin alphabet. According to Mathiassen's grammar, the diacritic under the vowels ą, ę, į and ų marks a vowel that was historically nasal; in today's Lithuanian these letters are pronounced as plain long vowels, with no nasal quality. The long vowel counterpart of i can also be spelled y, and the long vowel counterpart of u can also be spelled ū, alongside ų — as in Jūsų ("your," polite), the word this app's card Koks Jūsų vardas? ("What's your name?") uses for "your."
Sources
- Mathiassen, Terje (1996). "A Short Grammar of Lithuanian." Slavica Publishers — Chapter 1, Phonology, pp. 27, 29 (spelling of long vowels; nasal-origin diacritics)
- The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0 — Core Specification, Chapter 7: European Alphabetic Scripts — §7.1.3 Latin Extended-A (Lithuanian listed among the languages it supports)
Grammar essentials
Lithuanian nouns are declined for six cases — nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and locative — and Mathiassen's grammar notes that singular nouns also have a distinct vocative form. Because the case ending marks a word's role in the sentence, Mathiassen describes basic word order as changeable rather than free: varying the order shifts what is emphasized without making the sentence ungrammatical. Yes/no questions are formed by placing the particle ar at the very start of the sentence, as in this app's card Ar kalbate angliškai? ("Do you speak English?"). Negation is formed by attaching ne directly to the front of the word it negates, most often a verb, as in this app's card Nesuprantu ("I don't understand").
Sources
- Mathiassen, Terje (1996). "A Short Grammar of Lithuanian." Slavica Publishers — Chapter 2, The Noun, p. 38 (six cases; vocative); Chapter 14, Word Order, pp. 237-238 (changeable word order; ar-question particle); Chapter 7, The Adverb, p. 176 (negation with ne-)
Politeness & etiquette
Lithuanian marks politeness through the second-person pronoun. Mathiassen's grammar describes tu as the informal "you" and jūs — historically the plural "you" — as the pronoun of polite address, which requires the verb in the plural even when only one person is meant. This app's card Ar kalbate angliškai? ("Do you speak English?") explains in its own grammar note that the -ate verb ending (kalbate) is this polite or plural second person, to be used with strangers; the card Koks Jūsų vardas? ("What's your name?") likewise uses Jūsų, the genitive of the polite Jūs, and notes that Koks tavo vardas?, with the informal tavo, is said among friends.
Sources
- Mathiassen, Terje (1996). "A Short Grammar of Lithuanian." Slavica Publishers — Chapter 4, The Pronoun, p. 73 (jūs as polite address; plural verb agreement)