The Alphabet, Sounds, and Stress

The Alphabet

1.The Lithuanian alphabet has thirty-two letters. It is the Latin alphabet with q, w and x removed, and nine letters added by three diacritics: the nosinė or hook (ą ę į ų), the paukščiukas or háček (č š ž), and the length marks on ė and ū. A tenth addition, y, carries no diacritic but is a letter in its own right and is alphabetised after į, not beside i. The order matters because it is the order of every dictionary and index the learner will use.

abėcėlė

alphabet

žodis

word

kalba

language

• [1] The diacritics are not ornaments. Dropping the hook from ą or the bar from ū changes the word, and often the grammar: kąsti ‘to bite’ is not kasti ‘to dig’.
• [2] q, w, x appear only in unadapted foreign names and formulae; adapted borrowings are respelled (taksi, not taxi).

Short and Long Vowels

2.Length distinguishes words, so it must be heard and written. The short vowels are a e i u; the long are ą ę y ū ė o ų į and long a and e in stressed syllables. Length is not marked by one consistent device: y and ū show it by their own shape, ė by a letter distinct from e, the nosinė letters by a hook that no longer stands for nasality, and long a and e by nothing at all. The learner therefore cannot read length off the page in every case, which is why vocabulary is learned with its stress.

butas

flat — short u

būtas

been (past passive participle) — long ū — a different word

lįsti

to crawl in — long į

ilgas

long

The Nosinė Letters

3.ą ę į ų are called nosinės (‘nasal’) after a nasal consonant that was lost centuries ago. They mark length, not nasality: nothing is pronounced through the nose. They are worth attention because the hook is very often grammatical — the accusative singular of most nouns ends in one — so a missing hook is usually a missing case ending rather than a slip of the pen.

ąsotis

jug

kęsti

to endure

grįžti

to return

siųsti

to send

• [1] This is why ą and long a sound alike but are spelled differently: the hook records history and grammar, not a sound.

Consonants Differing from English

4.Most consonant letters have their expected values. Five do not: c is always /ts/, never /k/ or /s/; č is /tʃ/; š is /ʃ/; ž is /ʒ/; and j is the glide /j/ of English yes, never the affricate of jam. Lithuanian r is trilled in every position.

centras

centre — /tsɛntras/

čia

here

šalis

country

žodis

word

jau

already

The Consonant Digraphs Ch, Dz, Dž

5.Three pairs of letters spell single sounds: ch is a single fricative /x/, dz the affricate /dz/, and dž the affricate /dʒ/. They are digraphs, not clusters — but they are not letters of the alphabet, and a dictionary files džiaugsmas under d, not between d and e.

chemija

chemistry

dzūkas

a Dzūkian

džiaugsmas

joy

The Softening I

6.An i written between a consonant and a back vowel (a o u ą ų ū) is not a vowel: it marks the preceding consonant as soft (palatalised) and is itself silent. This is the single most common spelling trap in the language, because the same letter is a full vowel elsewhere. Compare kiauras ‘leaky’, where i softens the k and the vowel is au, with kiaušinis, where the same holds, against iš ‘out of’, where i is a vowel because no back vowel follows.

čia

here — soft č, vowel a

giria

forest — soft r; the final -ia is one syllable

puodas

pot — no i, hard d

ilgas

long — here i *is* the vowel

• [1] Before a front vowel (e ė i y ę į) a consonant is soft automatically and no i is written.

Diphthongs

7.Lithuanian has the proper diphthongs ai au ei ie ui uo and the mixed diphthongs — a short vowel followed by l m n r (al, am, an, ar, el, en, il, im, in, ir, ul, um, un, ur). Both count as a single long syllable and can carry either tone. ie and uo are the two that English speakers most often flatten: they are gliding sequences, not the monophthongs of see and saw.

laikas

time

duona

bread

vienas

one

kalnas

hill — mixed diphthong *al*

Spelling and Pronunciation

8.The orthography is close to phonemic but not a transcription. Two regular departures matter from the start. Voiced obstruents are devoiced before a voiceless consonant and at the end of a word, while voiceless ones are voiced before a voiced consonant — yet the spelling keeps the underlying letter, so daug is written with g and said with /k/. And the softening i of ¶6 is written but not sounded. Spelling records the word's identity; pronunciation records its surroundings.

daug

much, many — said /dauk/

dirbti

to work — the b is said /p/ before t

ačiū

thank you — soft č; the i is silent

Stress

9.Stress is free — it may fall on any syllable — and mobile: it moves between the forms of one word. Because it is mobile, it cannot be predicted from the written word, and a dictionary marks it with three signs: the grave \ on a short stressed syllable, the acute ´ for the falling tone on a long one, and the tilde ~ for the rising tone. A word is therefore learned with its stress, exactly as a noun is learned with its gender.

kalbà

language — stressed on the ending

kal̃bos

languages — stress on the stem, and a rising tone

nãmas

house

namè

in the house

• [1] Tone is a property of long syllables only, diphthongs included: a short syllable can be stressed but has no tone to contrast.