LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE. The Lithuanian language belongs, with Lettish and the extinct Old-Prussian language, to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family. It has preserved until the present day the phonetic system of the hypothetical Indo European parent-speech with such fidelity as to play a very im portant role in the study of the past history of the other Indo European languages. It is written in the Latin alphabet, but with out f, h, q, w, x (f and h occur in words borrowed from other languages), and with the addition of the following : e = c h in church), a or é (=ay in pay), ft (= oo in moon), s (=sh in shoot), (=j in French jour). The approximate values of the remaining vowel-letters are : a as in English father, e as in bet, where, i as in bit, o as in go, u as in put, y as ee in seen: of the remaining consonant-letters, p, t, k, b, d, g and v are pronounced as in English (g always hard as in get) ; c is pronounced ts; s as in so; z as in zero; j as y in yet.
The relation between the phonetic system of the parent Indo European speech, as reconstructed from Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and the other Indo-European languages (including Lithuanian) and that of Lithuanian is outlined in the following table a eoivaeoiuptbdbhdh Lith. aea iuo euoyfipt bd b d.
I.—E. k g gh kw r gwh r lmny ws Lith. s h h k g g rlmnj vs Examples (the words quoted in brackets from cognate languages have in many cases preserved the Indo-European sounds un changed) : axis "axle" (Lat. axis), esti "is" (Greek esti), avis "sheep" (Lat. ovis), suns "of a dog" (Gr. kunos, Sanskrit suns), moteri (acc. sg.) "woman" (Gr. [Doric] matera), menesi (acc.
sg.) "month" (Lat. mensem), duoti "to give" (Lat. &num), vytis "willow twig" (Lat. vitis "vine"), pfiti "to rot" (Lat. pus "pus"), bulis "buttock" (Skt. bulis), danti (acc. sg.) "tooth" (Gr. odonta), bijotis "to fear" (Skt. bhayate "he fears"), (pl.) "smoke" (Skt. dhiimas), parkas "pig" (Lat. porcus), zirnis "pea" (Lat. granum, Skt. jirnas "pounded," Engl. corn), vezu "convey in a cart" (Lat. veho), katras "which" (Skt. kataras, Greek poteros), gija "thread" (Skt. jiyd "bow-string," Gr. bios "bow"), ginklas "weapon," geneti to prune" (Skt. hanti=Hittite kuenzi, "he kills" [also "he strikes"], plur. Skt. ghnanti=Hittite kunanzi "they kill" [or "strike"]).
Each word has one stressed syllable, the position of which is not determined by any simple general rule, but may be different even in different inflections of the same word. The stressed syllable may be long or short : if long it will have either the acute accent or the circumflex, if short the grave accent. The accents are not written by the Lithuanians ; they were not recorded on a great scale until the Lithuanian Kurgaitis (Friedrich Kurschat) marked all the words in his grammar (1876), dictionary (1868-74, 2883) and New Testament edition with the three signs ('), ( ) and (').
The distinctions of which these three marks are the written signs are not in all cases easily audible by a foreigner, but their reality is proved by the absence of any serious contradiction between the testimony of Kurgaitis and that of other native observers. The available data were analysed by the Russian Philip Fortunatov (died 1914) and the Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure (died 1913), who elucidated the principles governing the movement of the ac cent and also showed, inter alia, that certain accentual distinc tions in Lithuanian correspond exactly to certain distinctions of a non-accentual nature in some other Indo-European languages (especially Greek and Sanskrit), and that these non-accentual distinctions existed in the Indo-European parent-language.
The inflectional system is of the same type as in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. The Noun and Adjective have six cases (Nom., Accus., Gen., Dat., Instrumental and Locative). Some stems have also a Vocative. The Dual survives, but the Neuter has been given up (except in certain fossilized relics). A "definite" form of the Adjective is formed by tacking on to it the pronominal stem ja–, both being declined, e.g., geras "good," gen. gero, geras–is "the good man," gen. gero–jo. In the Verb there has been a sweeping simplification of the complicated Indo-European system. Given the Pres. Indic., the Preterite Indic., and the Infinitive, all the other parts of a verb can be formed according to simple rules. The types of Present are often archaic ; the Future is closely re lated to the Greek Future (Lith. duosiu "I will give" = Gr. doseo), and the Indo-European Participles have survived with little change.
In the vocabulary the native element predominates, but there are also loan-words from Germanic and Slavonic. Some Germanic loans seem to be ancient, e.g., garvas "armour" from Gothic sarwa "weapon," midus "mead" from the unattested Gothic midu, kvietys "wheat," kliepas "loaf" from Old Norse hveiti, hleifr. The precise source of kunigas "priest" (cf. primitive Germanic kunin gaz "king") and pinigai "money" (cf. Old Norse penningr, etc.) is uncertain. Some Germanic words have passed into Slavonic and thence into Lithuanian, e.g., Gothic biuda-, Slavonic bl'udo, Lithuanian blifldas "dish." The older Lithuanian texts contain numerous loan-words (both Germanic and Slavonic) which have not been given currency in the modern literary language.
Large numbers of Lithuanian (or rather Baltic) words were borrowed by Finnish (or rather by the Finnish-Mordvinian Tcheremissian speech-community) about the beginning of the Christian era. Some recent writers date these borrowings earlier still, from 1000-500 B.C., but this is doubtful.