Baltic Branch of the Indo-European Family

Introduction

The Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family consists of related languages that were spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. All Baltic languages evolved from a common ancestral Proto-Baltic (which itself is thought to have split from a common Proto-Balto-Slavic). The Baltic branch is sometimes divided into two sub-groups: Western Baltic, containing only extinct languages, and Eastern Baltic, containing both extinct and the only two surviving languages: Latvian and Lithuanian. Speakers of these languages are generally concentrated within the borders of Lithuania and Latvia, and in emigrant communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, as well as Eastern Europe and Russia.

Baltic Sea Both Lithuanian and Latvian have retained many features of Proto-Indo-European, the hypothetical common ancestor of all Indo-European languages that is believed to have been spoken in Central Asia around 4,000 BC. The Baltic languages are of particular interest to linguists because they retain many archaic features that are believed to have been present in the Latvia Church early stages of the Proto-Indo-European language because the Baltic peoples resisted Christianization longer than any other Europeans, thus delaying the introduction of writing and isolating their languages from outside influences. Of the two languages, Lithuanian is the more conservative, having retained more archaic grammatical forms than Latvian, especially in its sound system and noun morphology. These features have been attested only in extinct Indo-European languages.

The two living Baltic languages, Latvian and Lithuanian, enjoy official status in their respective countries.

Latvian

Lithuanian

Latvian is the official language of the Republic of Latvia, where it is spoken by about 1.4 million people. Latvian was given the status of the official state language in 1989, two years prior to the country's independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Latvian is also spoken in Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and USA. Ethnologue estimates that about 1.5 million people worldwide claim Latvian as their primary language.

Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. It is spoken in Lithuania by close to 3 million people of all ages in all public and personal domains. Between 1940 and 1990, Lithuanian co-existed alongside Russian, the dominant language of the country at the time. When Lithuania gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, a large number of publications in Lithuanian started to appear once again.. Besides Lithuania, it is also spoken in Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Canada, and the US. The worldwide population of Lithuanian speakers is estimated at around 3.1 million (Ethnologue).

Structure

Sound System

The sound systems of Latvian and Lithuanian share some common features:

Grammar

Latvian and Lithuanian are highly inflected languages which share features typical of Indo-European languages:

nouns are marked for gender, number and case;
verbs are marked for person, number, tense, aspect, and mood;
word order is normally Subject-Verb-Object, but other orders are also possible.

Vocabulary

dress Latvian women The basic vocabularies of Latvian and Lithuanian are quite different. They have not been significantly influenced by other languages. Take a look at some common phrases and words in the two languages, and you will see why they are not mutually intelligible. However, there are many words that were borrowed from other languages, such as Polish, Russian, German, and Latin. Since independence in 1991, English has replaced Russian as a source of borrowed words in both Latvian and Lithuanian.

Baltic Phrases

Take a look at numbers 1-10 in Latvian and Lithuanian and you will see similarities between the two:

Latvian

Lithuanian

Writing

stamp

symbol

Baltic peoples resisted Christianization longer than any other Europeans, which delayed the introduction of writing and isolated their languages from outside influences. As a result, Lithuanian was first attested in a hymnal translation only in 1545, and the first printed book in Lithuanian was published in 1547. Latvian appeared in a hymnal only in 1530 and in a printed Catechism in 1585.

Lithuanian was mostly an oral vernacular during the years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795). All official documents were written in Latin, Polish, or Belarusian. After the 18th-century Partitions of Poland by Prussia, Russia, and Habsburg Austria, most of the Baltic lands came under the rule of the Russian Empire, where the native languages were sometimes prohibited from being written.

Today, both Latvian and Lithuanian are written with adapted versions of the Latin alphabet. Both alphabets use diacritics instead of digraphs.

Latvian alphabet

Lithuanian alphabet

Below is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Latvian and Lithuanian. You can see the similarities and differences in the two writing systems.

Latvian
Pants 1.

Lithuanian
1 Straipsnis.
UHDR Lithuanian

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Resources

Click here to find out where Latvian and Lithuanian are taught in the United States.
Click here to find learning materials for studying Latvian and Lithuanian.

Other resources for the study of Baltic languages and cultures are listed under Latvian and Lithuanian on this website.

Click on the language to learn more about it on this website
Latvian
Lithuanian