Lithuanian language
Baltic language spoken in Lithuania
Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba, pronounced [lʲiəˈtʊvʲuː kɐɫˈbɐ]) 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, in some aspects, consider it to be the most conservative of the existing 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 (particularly its early form, Vedic Sanskrit) and Ancient Greek. Thus, it is an important source for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation (the earliest Lithuanian texts date to c. 1500 AD, whereas Ancient Greek was first written down about three thousand years earlier in c. 1450 BC).
“Lithuanian language” enters the record as baltic language spoken in Lithuania. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lithuanian, language and Baltic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Lithuanian language” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lithuanian, language and Baltic provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9083. The Library of Congress control number is sh85077647. Authority coordinates are 55.000, 24.000. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1500 and 1450.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lithuanian language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.