Lithuanian language

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
lietuvių kalba
Native to	Lithuania
Region	Europe
Native speakers	2.96 million (Lithuania) 170,000 (Abroad) 3.13 million (Worldwide)[1]
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
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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.

References

1. Ethnologue report for language code:lit