Interesting facts about the language

Lithuanian belongs to the East Baltic languages, whose roots, via the Baltic languages, can in turn be counted among the Indo-European languages. Other Indo-European language branches include the Germanic (e.g., German and English), the Slavic (e.g., Russian and Polish), and the Nordic (e.g., Danish and Swedish) branches. The Lithuanian language is genetically related to Latvian. However, it must be said that Latvians and Lithuanians do not really understand each other, as their languages have developed relatively differently over time. Lithuania (Lietuva) has a population of around 3.4 million, but only about 2.7 million of them speak Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba 'Lithuanian language') as their native language. Approximately 300,000 inhabitants speak Russian as their first language. This is because Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union until 1991.

Approximately 200,000 people in Lithuania speak Polish as their native language. Other, less widely spoken languages in Lithuania include Belarusian, Ukrainian, Tatar, Karaite, and Latvian. Like German and most languages spoken in Europe, Lithuanian uses the Latin alphabet. However, the Lithuanian alphabet also contains a few special characters. Diacritical marks are also used; these are marks above or below letters (for example, the ų in lietuvių kalba, 'Lithuanian language', or the ė in Joninės, 'St. John's Day'). The Lithuanian language has many preserved ancient forms and is therefore considered rather ancient and of great interest to linguists. Lithuanian is the living language within the group of Indo-European languages that is closest to Sanskrit. The Lithuanian alphabet consists of 32 letters.