Nouns, Gender, and the Verb Būti

Gender

10.Every Lithuanian noun is masculine or feminine. There is no neuter, and no third option to fall back on. Gender is not a claim about the thing named — stalas ‘table’ is masculine and knyga ‘book’ feminine, and neither fact is about furniture or books. It matters because it is not confined to the noun: the adjective that describes it and the pronoun that replaces it must both follow it, so a noun learned without its gender is a noun that cannot yet be used in a sentence.

namas

house — masculine

knyga

book — feminine

Namas yra didelis.

The house is big. — masculine adjective

Knyga yra didelė.

The book is big. — feminine adjective

The Endings of the Nominative Singular

11.The dictionary form of a noun usually announces its gender. Masculines end in -as, -is, -ys or -us; feminines in -a or -ė. The guide is good but not perfect, and it fails in one place: a small group of very common nouns end in -is and are feminine. There is no way to tell them from masculine -is nouns by looking, which is why a noun is learned with its gender and its genitive — brolis, brolio is masculine, moteris, moters feminine, and the genitive is what separates them.

berniukas ir mergaitė

a boy and a girl

brolis, brolio

brother — masculine -is

moteris, moters

woman — feminine -is — the trap

katė

cat — feminine

Absence of the Article

12.Lithuanian has neither a definite nor an indefinite article. Namas is at once ‘a house’ and ‘the house’; nothing in the word chooses between them, and nothing needs to. Definiteness is left to the context, and made explicit only when it matters — by a demonstrative, or by where the word is placed in the sentence. The beginner's error is not omitting an article but reaching for a word to translate one with.

Namas yra didelis.

The house is big.

Tai namas.

This is a house.

Čia knyga.

Here is a book.

The Nominative Case

13.Lithuanian nouns decline in seven cases. The first is the nominative: the form the dictionary gives, and the form used for the subject — the person or thing of which something is said. Every other case will be introduced against this one, so it is worth being clear that the nominative is not a neutral or caseless shape. It is one case among seven, doing one job.

Mergaitė yra maža.

The girl is small.

Mokytojas yra geras.

The teacher is good.

Katė ir šuo.

The cat and the dog. — both nominative

The Personal Pronouns

14.The personal pronouns in the nominative are given below. The third person distinguishes gender in both numbers, so that English they answers to two Lithuanian words. Because the verb ending already carries the person, the pronoun is commonly omitted; it is put in for emphasis or contrast, much as English raises the voice.

Aš esu mokytojas.

I am a teacher.

Esu mokytojas.

I am a teacher. — the pronoun dropped

Aš esu mokytojas, o ji yra mokytoja.

I am a teacher, and she is a teacher. — kept, for contrast

The Present Tense of Būti

15.Būti, to be, is irregular and must be learned entire. One feature of it is not peculiar to it at all: the third person has a single form for both numbers and both genders. Yra is ‘he is’, ‘she is’ and ‘they are’ alike. Every Lithuanian verb behaves so, which is worth noticing here, because it means the third-person ending never tells you how many people are meant.

Mes esame čia.

We are here.

Jis yra geras.

He is good.

Knyga nėra nauja.

The book is not new. — note nėra

Aš nesu mokytojas.

I am not a teacher.

• [1] Nėra is a contraction, not a spelling variant. Writing neyra is an error of grammar as much as of orthography (see ¶1).

The Predicate Noun and Adjective

16.A noun or adjective joined to the subject by būti forms part of what is asserted of it, and is called a predicate noun or predicate adjective. It stands in the nominative, exactly like the subject — there are now two nominatives in the sentence, and only the word order and the sense say which is which. This is why būti is not a verb that takes an object.

Jonas yra mokytojas.

Jonas is a teacher.

Diena yra graži.

The day is beautiful.

Tai mano brolis.

This is my brother. — *tai* + nominative

Agreement of the Adjective

17.An adjective agrees with its noun in gender, whether it stands before the noun as an attribute or after būti as a predicate. Adjectives fall into three classes by their pair of endings: -as / -a, -us / -i, and -is / -ė. The class is a fact about the adjective and has nothing to do with the noun: gražus makes its feminine graži whatever noun it describes, and didelis makes didelė. Agreement therefore requires two things at once — the gender of the noun and the class of the adjective.

geras mokytojas

a good teacher

gera mokytoja

a good teacher (female)

graži diena

a beautiful day — class II: -us / -i

didelė knyga

a big book — class III: -is / -ė

• [1] An attributive adjective normally precedes its noun, as in English.

Word Order

18.Because the endings show what each word is doing, word order is freer than in English and is used for emphasis rather than for grammar. The unemphatic order is nevertheless subject – verb – predicate, and the learner should keep to it until there is something to emphasise. Moving a word to the front foregrounds it; it does not change who is doing what.

Namas yra naujas.

The house is new.

Naujas yra namas.

It is *new*, the house. — emphasis