Lithuanian

Also known as Lithuanian language, Lietuvių

Baltic language spoken in Lithuania

AI overview

Lithuanian is a language spoken in Lithuania, a Baltic country in Northern Europe. It's one of only two surviving Baltic languages and is notable for preserving many ancient linguistic features that help scholars understand the early development of Indo-European languages.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Show 11 more facts

Wikimedia language code: lt
Commons category: Lithuanian language
time of earliest written record: 1515-00-00
exact match: publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/language/LIT
P10369: metrology
P11012: Wikimedia Foundation
entry in abbreviations table: литов.
short name: litova
female form of label: la langue lituanienne
native label: Lietuviškai
number of speakers, writers, or signers: 4000000

Sources (9)

via Wikidata · CC0

~40 min read

Article

Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba, pronounced [lʲiəˈtʊvʲuː kɐɫˈbɐ]) is an East Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of Lithuanians and the official language of Lithuania as well as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are approximately 2.8 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 1.5 million speakers elsewhere. Around half a million inhabitants of Lithuania of non-Lithuanian background speak Lithuanian daily as a second language.

Lithuanian is closely related to neighbouring Latvian, though the two languages are not mutually intelligible. It is written in a Latin script. Some linguists consider it to be the most conservative of the existing Indo-European languages, retaining features of the Proto-Indo-European language that have otherwise been lost to more recent linguistic developments in the remainder of its descendant languages.