LITHUANIAN TRANSLATION

Need Lithuanian Translation? Our certified, experienced translators can translate your printed documents or website from English to Lithuanian.

MORE INFORMATION
For a quick step-by-step information guide regarding pricing, timelines and more for your Lithuanian translation, start here.

ABOUT LITHUANIAN
Lithuanian is spoken by a majority of the population in the Republic of Lithuania. Outside of Lithuania, it is widely spoken in Poland, the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay. Only about four million people speak the language. It is one of two remaining Baltic languages, the other being Latvian. Old Baltic branched off into separate dialects, of which there were two groups — the western and the eastern. The eastern group included Lithuanian and Latvian, as well as some other now-extinct languages. Lithuanian and Latvian began to branch off into separate languages around the seventh century A.D.

The Baltic languages are the most linguistically conservative of the Indo-European languages, retaining many old grammatical forms and archaic features. It has been said that the speech of a Lithuanian peasant is the closest thing existing today to the speech of the original Indo-Europeans. However, Lithuanian has undergone some language changes, so the older, obsolete form of the language is now called Old Lithuanian.

Currently, there are two major dialects of Lithuanian recognized. The first is Aukshtaitish, also referred to as Aukshtaichiai or High Lithuanian. The second is Shamaitish, referred variably as Samogitian, Zemaitish, Zemachiai, or Low Lithuanian. The modern standard is based on the Southern sub-dialect of West Aukshtaitish (High Lithuanian). The earliest Lithuanian texts, however, are in Low Lithuanian.

Lithuanian uses a modified form of the Roman script. Prior to the adoption of the Roman alphabet, there was limited use of Cyrillic between 1864 and 1905. The Lithuanian alphabet contains 32 letters, with a number of diacritical marks to indicate special sounds. Lithuanian has a pitch accent system —- a stressed vowel may have a rising pitch, called circumflex, or a falling pitch, called acute. There are seven nominal cases in Lithuanian, two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine), and three numbers (singular, plural, and dual). Cases are indicated by endings on the noun.