Lithuanian (
lietuviu kalba), is the official state language of
Lithuania and is recognised as one of the official languages of the
European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a
Baltic language, closely related to
Latvian, although they are not
mutually intelligible. It is written in the
Roman script.
Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant.
Lithuanian still retains many of the original features of the nominal morphology found in the common ancestors of the Indo-European languages, and has therefore been the focus of much study in the area of Indo-European linguistics. Studies in the field of comparative linguistics have shown it to be the most conservative living Indo-European language.[2][3]
Lithuanian and other Baltic languages passed through Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, during which Baltic languages developed numerous exclusive and non-exclusive lexical, morphological, phonological and accentual isoglosses with Slavic languages, which represent their closest living Indo-European relative. Moreover, with Lithuanian being so archaic in phonology, Slavic words can often be deduced from Lithuanian by regular sound laws.
