Lithuanian language

Lithuanian
Lithuanian
lietuvių kalba
Native to	Lithuania
Region	Europe
Native speakers	2.96 million (Lithuania); 170,000 (Abroad); 3.13 million (Worldwide) (date missing)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Baltic Eastern Baltic Lithuanian; ; ; ;
Dialects	Samogitian, Aukštaitian
Writing system	Roman script
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	lit
Linguasphere	54-AAA-a
	This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
	This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Lithuanian language is a Baltic language. It is from Lithuania, spoken in a few countries in Europe, as well as in the Americas and Australia.

Lithuanian and Latvian are the only remaining Baltic languages. Both languages have much in common. Lithuanian, however, adopted fewer words and phrases from German and other languages. However, many words were adopted into Lithuanian by Slavic languages long ago, but in 1920, Lithuanian philologist Jonas Jablonskis and others replaced them with native Lithuanian words.

The front cover of the Katekizmas, published in East Prussia in 1547.

There are two main dialects of Lithuanian. Samogitian is used mostly in West Lithuania, and the other that is widely used in the whole country is Aukštaitian (Highlanders' dialect). The standard Lithuanian comes from West Aukštaitian.

The first book written in Lithuanian is Katekizmas by Martynas Mažvydas. It was published in East Prussia in 1547.

Even though Lithuanian was written down relatively recently, it is known for being close to old Indo-European languages, keeping old traits found only in early languages like Vedic Sanskrit and lost in later languages.

Lithuanian Language Media

Area where Lithuanian was spoken in the 16th century
The oldest surviving manuscript in Lithuanian (c. 1503), rewritten from a 15th century original text
Area where Lithuanian was dominantly spoken, including its islands and mixed territories in the late 19th century by Polish linguist Jan Michał Rozwadowski
Geographic distribution of Lithuanian in the Russian Empire according to 1897 census.
Title page of Vyriausybės Žinios with articles of the 1922 Constitution of Lithuania. The sixth article established Lithuanian as the sole official language of Lithuania.
Distribution of the Baltic tribes, c. 1200 (boundaries are approximate).
Various schematic sketches of possible Balto-Slavic language relationships.
A map of European languages (1741) with the first verse of the Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian
Dialects of Lithuanian. Samogitian dialects are yellow, red, and brown; Aukštaitian subdialects are green, blue, and purple.