Guide to the Lithuanian language
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Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by 3 to 4 million native speakers. The language is also spoken in some other countries by Lithuanian emigrants. This guide does not teach you any useful language, it only introduces you to some possible ways of learning. Feel free to copy or distribute the article however you like.
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
Sveiki, as we say it in Lithuanian. At first, to dispel the doubts that you might have just experienced, - yes, I am a native speaker. But no, apart from this article I can not possibly help you learning.
I've been reading some English-Lithuanian discussion boards constantly and many people were asking for tips about learning Lithuanian. Well, they might do not know the truth, but Lithuanian is not a language you can easily master using only the Internet. All one can do is to have some pointless attempts doing it. Anyway, 'viltis miršta paskutinė' or 'hope dies lastly', so I wrote an article for these incurable optimists (Lithuanian might be the cure, though).
But before starting, while you have still got a chance you should decide whether you really want to learn this awful language, with rules having more exceptions than instances and with accentuation-system which is more than a pain (if the devil himself would have to make the worst and the most difficult accentuation system imaginable, he could not overdo the Lithuanian one, probably). If you really want to learn the language, the next thing you should ask yourself is why. But I do not want to philosophize too much here, so lets just skip it.
[edit] The learning scheme
Okay, we should just be short and precise. There are many methods for learning a language. Some say you should only read books in the subject and forget about everything else, the others disagree and offer you other ways. Stebuklinga formulė (a magic formula) of self-teaching a language does not exist probably (if you found it, let me know). The method I use for learning languages is simple: some pronunciation practice at first, then - basic grammar and vocabulary, and then I leave it on the rest of vocabulary. It would work perfectly for some easy languages, but for languages like Lithuanian one must learn everything constantly (okay, count the pronunciation out - except for the awful accentuation system that has to be learnt for almost every word, the rest of pronunciation is easy). Learn as much as you can and what you can. The only advice I can give you is to learn only from the sources you trust (you do not want to learn something like a Northeastern Indian dialect used by like 3 people, instead of Lithuanian, or do you?).
Anyway, you will probably get to the point when going to a Lithuanian speaking country (huh?) or at least talking in real life (no, internet does not count) with real Lithuanian people will be a must.
[edit] Concrete advice
Time to admit, I do not really know what is the best way to start learning Lithuanian. But this is one of them:
- Get a pen friend. That's the least you can do. And ask him to write correct Lithuanian (with special signs and grammar as clean as possible).
- Get another course. Some people recommended Po truputį, but there are many who do not like it because it lacks English translations. One can download an example file from the course.
- Continue your learning. You could read news in Lithuanian (delfi.lt is the most popular), blog in Lithuanian (blogas.lt can help you with this) or even use Google in Lithuanian. Keep in mind, that if you even need a Lithuanian site catalog on.lt has a little outdated one.
- Use your language as much as possible. Go to the country or talk with people. Also, voice conversations can be helpful (Skype does the job). Just do not go to the chats, at least to the usual ones, because the language spoken here is incorrect and nasty.
[edit] Related links
- Alkonas - a great Lithuanian-English dictionary available online (an offline version is available too, but it costs)
- Lithuanian.net guestbook - a site you might want to search a pen friend or a translation, quite bad designed and kind of outdated as for my opinion
- Flash course a new flash Lithuanian course
- Lithuanian teaching site - yet another Lithuanian teaching site, has many lacks, though
- Lithuanian Wikipedia - can help learning and is interesting reading
[edit] Other links
- Aitvaras - the page of the biggest Lithuanian IRC network, it is really not recommended to chat in IRC and the consequences can be very hard but it can be helpful while looking for Lithuanians willing to help with the language
- Rapid Language Learning - an article by Konstantin Ryabitsev of how he managed to learn French; some tips might be used with Lithuanian, even though that it is probably rather more difficult than French
[edit] The epilogue
You know, the Lithuanian is difficult. But so as many natural languages are. Learning a language is iššūkis (a challenge) and no challenges are easy to beat. But try your best and when you are short of patience, remember, that if these 3 to 4 million native Lithuanians and a lot more other people managed to learn the language, why can't you? It's only a matter of practice.
Good luck with your studies, anyway. :)
