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] |
| Dialects | |
| Roman script | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Lithuania European Union |
Recognised minority language in | |
| 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 |
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.
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.
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