The language from the land of legends

Hello! – Sveiki
As the southernmost of the three Baltic countries, Lithuania (Lietuva) is surrounded by the Baltic Sea, Latvia, Poland and Belarus. The area of the country is 65,300 km² and the number of inhabitants is almost 2.8 million.

Like Latvian, Lithuanian is also one of the Baltic languages.

For about 3.2 million people, Lithuanian is their mother tongue. Many Lithuanian speakers live outside Lithuania in Western Europe, where many Lithuanians emigrated to after Lithuania's accession to the EU. Furthermore, Lithuanian minorities are also encountered in Belarus and Poland. In turn, many Poles and Russians are resident in Lithuania.

The Lithuanian alphabet is Latin in nature, but has various accentuations, e.g. ą, č, į, ū, š. It is typical in Lithuanian that the surname of a person can be used to infer his or her gender and marital status. For example, a man has the surname Kazlauskas, the one of his wife is Kazlauskienė and his daughter's is Kazlauskaitė.

Another striking aspect of the Lithuanian language is the transliteration of foreign words or names. Against this background, a name like George Bush is Džordžas Bušas in Lithuanian. Harry Potter is thus transformed into Haris Poteris.

In Lithuania, the parliamentary commission of the Lithuanian language is responsible for keeping the Lithuanian language clean. This commission has set itself the task of preventing the introduction of foreign words into the language and the formation of new words. It is also responsible for checking the pronunciation on television and radio.