Learn Lithuanian
with Ling

Lithuanian belongs to the Indo-European language family from the Balto-Slavic branch. According to the Foreign Service Institute, Lithuanian is classified as a category III language, along with Khmer, Hindi, Tagalog, and Thai, which means it will take the average learner at least 1100 hours to reach proficiency.

Here are some essential tips to know when starting Lithuanian:

• Grammar:  Lithuanian grammar has been greatly influenced by Proto-Indo-European and Sanskrit languages. As such, the grammar is quite different from modern and standardized languages. Mainly, Lithuanian is an inflected language with two genders for nouns and three genders for adjectives, numerals, participles, and pronouns. The language also has seven cases.
• Vocabulary:  Since Lithuanian is one of the oldest languages, some of its vocabulary has no equivalence to English words. However, there are many shared cognates in classical languages such as Latin and Sanskrit.
• Speaking/Listening: Lithuanian features a lot of diphthongs, otherwise known as a gliding vowel. Standard Lithuania comes from the Lithuanian dialect Aukštaitian (Highland Lithuanian) in the West. At the same time, you can hear Samogitian (Lowland Lithuanian) in some of the Western regions, as well as North and South Lithuania.
• Reading/Writing: Lithuanian uses the Latin alphabet with extra diacritic characters (ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž) for a total of 32 letters. Writing and reading Lithuanian follows the sentence pattern Subject-Verb-Object.

Do you want learn Lithuanian? If so, you need to focus on the right techniques to effectively learn the language. If you can’t travel to Lithuania to learn the language from locals, the next best thing would be to find a reliable online resource. What better choice than the Ling app!

With the Ling app, you can learn how to speak, write, read, and write Lithuanian with the most engaging exercises and activities! The app also includes hundreds of essential phrases, that way you can speak to locals in complete sentences instead of with single words.

Make learning Lithuanian easier by:

• Listening to podcasts in Lithuanian and about Lithuanian news
• Watching YouTube videos about Lithuania
• Learning how to create basic phrases first before moving on to more complex sentence structures
• Creating topics and scenarios to boost your writing and speaking skills when learning the seven different cases
• Speaking with native Lithuanian speakers
• Not focusing on your mistakes
• Having fun by using the Ling App

There are an estimated 300 languages in the world, so why should you learn how to speak Lithuanian? Besides the fact that there are at least 2.8 million Lithuanian speakers globally, Lithuanian (Lietuvių kalba) is one of the oldest languages to date and is one of the European Union’s official languages.

Since Lithuanian is one of the earliest Indo-European languages, learning it will allow you to appreciate its beauty and understand how the European nations came to be. It’s for this reason that Lithuanian is so popular among linguists, language enthusiasts, and those curious about the history of ancient languages. Remember that having a purpose for studying a certain language will help keep you motivated!

Here are some other reasons why Lithuanian is worth learning:

• One of the oldest languages in existence today
• Form a connection with the history of Baltic and Slavic languages
• Make traveling to Lithuania easier
• Career advancement
• Improve your memory and overall brain function

The question of whether Lithuania is Slavic or Baltic is quite ambiguous and complex. In short, Lithuanian is considered to be a Baltic language along with other Eastern Baltic languages like Latvian, Latgalian, Old Curonian, Samogitian and extinct languages like Selonian and Semigallian.

As linguists have confirmed, Lithuania belongs to the Indo-European language family’s Balto-Slavic branch. However, the term Baltic languages for Lithuanian, Old Prussian, and Latvian was first coined by German linguist Ferdinand Nesselman in 1845. There are tonal similarities between Lithuanian and Serbo-Croatian languages, and you’ll also find the same stresses in Russian and Lithuanian on certain syllables.

Similar to Lithuanian is Latvian, another preserved language from the original Proto-Indo-European language family. However, Lithuanian includes more ancient grammar rules and phonology than Latvian.