Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is an East Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of Lithuanians and the official language of Lithuania as well as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are approximately 2.8 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 1.5 million speakers elsewhere. Around half a million inhabitants of Lithuania of non-Lithuanian background speak Lithuanian daily as a second language.
Lithuanian is closely related to neighbouring Latvian, though the two languages are not mutually intelligible. It is written in a Latin script. Some linguists consider it to be the most conservative of the extant Indo-European languages, retaining features of the Proto-Indo-European language that have otherwise been lost to more recent linguistic developments in the remainder of its descendant languages.
History
Pre-statehood period of Lithuania
Among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is conservative in its grammar and phonology, retaining archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit and Ancient Greek. Thus, it is an important source for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation.According to hydronyms of Baltic origin, the Baltic languages were spoken in a large area east of the Baltic Sea, and in c.1000 BC it had two linguistic units: western and eastern. According to glottochronological research, the Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between c.400 BC and c.600 BC. The Greek geographer Ptolemy had already written of two Baltic tribe/nations by name, the Galindai and Sudinoi, in the 2nd century AD. Lithuanian originated from the Eastern Baltic subgroup and remained nearly unchanged until c.1 AD, however in c.500 AD the language of the northern part of Eastern Balts was influenced by the Finnic languages, which fueled the development of changes from the language of the Southern Balts. The language of Southern Balts was less influenced by this process and retained many of its older features, which form Lithuanian.
The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after c.800 AD; for a long period, they could be considered dialects of a single language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th or 15th century and perhaps as late as the 17th century. The German Livonian Brothers of the Sword occupied the western part of the Daugava basin, which resulted in colonization of the territory of modern Latvia by Germans and had a significant influence on the language's independent development due to Germanisation.
There was fascination with the Lithuanian people and their language among late 19th-century researchers, and the philologist Isaac Taylor wrote the following in his The Origin of the Aryans :
"Thus it would seem that the Lithuanians have the best claim to represent the primitive Aryan race, as their language exhibits fewer of those phonetic changes, and of those grammatical losses which are consequent on the acquirement of a foreign speech."
Lithuanian was studied by several linguists such as Franz Bopp, August Schleicher, Adalbert Bezzenberger, Louis Hjelmslev, Ferdinand de Saussure, Winfred P. Lehmann and Vladimir Toporov, Jan Safarewicz, and others.
By studying place names of Lithuanian origin, linguist concluded that the eastern boundaries of Lithuanian used to be in the shape of zigzags through Grodno, Shchuchyn, Lida, Valozhyn, Svir, and Braslaw. Such eastern boundaries partly coincide with the spread of Catholic and Orthodox faith, and should have existed at the time of the Christianization of Lithuania in 1387 and later. Safarewicz's eastern boundaries were moved even further to the south and east by other scholars.
Proto-Balto-Slavic branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then sub-branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Proto-Baltic branched off into Proto-West Baltic and Proto-East Baltic. The Baltic languages passed through a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, from which the Baltic languages retain exclusive and non-exclusive lexical, morphological, phonological and accentual isoglosses in common with the Slavic languages, which represent their closest living Indo-European relatives. Moreover, with Lithuanian being so archaic in phonology, Slavic words can often be deduced from Lithuanian by regular sound laws; for example, Lithuanian and Polish ← Proto-Balto-Slavic *wilkás ← Proto-Indo-European, all meaning "wolf".
Because of the three archaeological cultures in Lithuania, some scholars divide the Lithuanian ethnos into three cultural groups – Samogitians, Aukštaitians and Lithuanians. Traditionally, the Samogitian tribe is included within the broader Lithuanian ethnos as suggested by historical accounts, dividing Lithuania into two parts – Austechia and Samogitia – but their origins are a subject of ongoing debates. Linguist Jūratė Sofija Laučiūtė argues that prior to their assimilation, ancient Samogitians were a different tribe from the Lithuanians, which is evinced by certain linguistic features not explainable by phonetics alone, such as the ending -ou <*-ou of masculine nouns in genitive form. Valdemaras Šimėnas suggests that both culturally and linguistically ancient Samogitians were closer to Curonians, Semigallians and Selonians than Lithuanians. In the late 12th century, Samogitians and Lithuanians formed a tribal union, which was the basis for the future Lithuanian state.
Grand Duchy of Lithuania period
Initially, Lithuanian was a spoken language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Duchy of Prussia, while the beginning of Lithuanian writing is possibly associated with the introduction of Christianity in Lithuania when Mindaugas was baptized and crowned King of Lithuania in 1250–1251. It is believed that prayers were translated into the local dialect of Lithuanian by Franciscan monks during the baptism of Mindaugas, however none of the writings has survived. The first recorded Lithuanian word, reported to have been said on 24 December 1207 from the chronicle of Henry of Latvia, was Ba, an interjection of a Lithuanian raider after he found no loot to pillage in a Livonian church.Although no writings in Lithuanian have survived from the 15th century or earlier, Lithuanian was mentioned as one of the European languages of the participants in the Council of Constance in 1414–1418. From the middle of the 15th century, the legend spread about the Roman origin of the Lithuanian nobility, and the closeness of the Lithuanian language and Latin, thus this let some intellectuals in the mid-16th century to advocate for replacement of Ruthenian with Latin, as they considered Latin as the native language of Lithuanians.
Initially, Latin and Church Slavonic were the main written languages of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but in the late 17th century – 18th century Church Slavonic was replaced with Polish. Nevertheless, Lithuanian was a spoken language of the medieval Lithuanian rulers from the Gediminids dynasty and its cadet branches: Kęstutaičiai and Jagiellonian dynasties. It is known that Jogaila, being ethnic Lithuanian by the male-line, himself knew and spoke Lithuanian with Vytautas the Great, his cousin from the Gediminids dynasty. During the Christianization of Samogitia none of the clergy, who arrived to Samogitia with Jogaila, were able to communicate with the natives, therefore Jogaila himself taught the Samogitians about Catholicism; thus he was able to communicate in the Samogitian dialect of Lithuanian. Soon afterwards Vytautas the Great wrote in his 11 March 1420 letter to Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, that Lithuanian and Samogitian are the same language.
The use of Lithuanian continued at the Lithuanian royal court after the deaths of Vytautas the Great and Jogaila. For example, since the young Grand Duke Casimir IV Jagiellon was underage, the supreme control over the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was in the hands of the Lithuanian Council of Lords, presided by Jonas Goštautas, while Casimir IV Jagiellon was taught Lithuanian and customs of Lithuania by appointed court officials. During the Polish szlachta's envoys visit to Casimir in 1446, they noticed that in Casimir's royal court the Lithuanian-speaking courtiers were mandatory, alongside the Polish courtiers. Casimir IV Jagiellon's son Saint Casimir, who was subsequently announced as patron saint of Lithuania, was a polyglot and among other languages knew Lithuanian. Grand Duke Alexander Jagiellon also could understand and speak Lithuanian as multiple Lithuanian priests served in his royal chapel and he also maintained a Lithuanian court. In 1501, Erazm Ciołek, a priest of the Vilnius Cathedral, explained to the Pope that the Lithuanians preserve their language and ensure respect to it, but they also use the Ruthenian language for simplicity reasons because it is spoken by almost half of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A note written by Sigismund von Herberstein in the first half of the 16th century states that, in an ocean of Ruthenian in this part of Europe, there were two non-Ruthenian regions: Lithuania and Samogitia where its inhabitants spoke their own language, but many Ruthenians were also living among them.
The earliest surviving written Lithuanian text is a translation dating from about 1503–1525 of the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Nicene Creed written in the Southern Aukštaitian dialect. Since 1530–1560 Prussian Lithuanians were taught in native Lithuanian language in parishes and peasants schools of Lithuania Minor, and for 200 years the authorities of the Duchy of Prussia did not take major obstructive measures against such education, although such proposals were occasionally made beginning in the 18th century and decrees were issued without being implemented. On 8 January 1547 the first Lithuanian book was printed – the Catechism of Martynas Mažvydas.
At the royal courts in Vilnius of Sigismund II Augustus, the last Grand Duke of Lithuania prior to the Union of Lublin, both Polish and Lithuanian were spoken equally widely. In 1552 Sigismund II Augustus ordered that orders of the Magistrate of Vilnius be announced in Lithuanian, Polish, and Ruthenian. The same requirement was valid for the Magistrate of Kaunas.
In the 16th century, following the decline of Ruthenian usage in favor of Polish in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Lithuanian language strengthened its positions in Lithuania due to reforms in religious matters and judicial reforms which allowed lower levels of the Lithuanian nobility to participate in the social-political life of the state. In 1599, Mikalojus Daukša published his Postil and in its prefaces he expressed that the Lithuanian language situation had improved and thanked bishop Merkelis Giedraitis for his works.
File:Lithuanian primer for kids, published in Vilnius, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1783 edition.jpg|thumb|upright|Lithuanian primer for children Moksłas skaytima raszta lietuwiszka, published in Lithuania's capital Vilnius in 1783
The early 18th century was devastating for the Lithuanian speakers as the Great Northern War plague outbreak in 1700–1721 killed 49% of residents in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and 53% of residents in Lithuania Minor. On the other hand, Lithuanian language seminars were established in the University of Königsberg and in the Prussian University of Halle.
Until 1741 in the Lithuanian Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, which encompassed the counties of Klaipėda, Tilsit, Ragnit, Insterburg, there were 275 Lithuanian primary schools, in 1800 – 411 Lithuanian schools.
In 1776–1790 about 1,000 copies of the first Catholic primer in Lithuanian – Mokslas skaitymo rašto lietuviško – were issued annually, and it continued to be published until 1864. Over 15,000 copies appeared in total. The Constitution of 3 May 1791 was translated into the Lithuanian language shortly after its adoption by the Great Sejm. During the Kościuszko Uprising directive documents were distributed and appeals were published in various languages, including Lithuanian, also the Lithuanian language was used for sermons dedicated to the uprising.