Lithuanian alphabet

Lithuanian employs a modified Roman script. It is composed of 32 letters. The collation order presents one surprise: "Y" is moved to occur between I Ogonek (Į) and J.

Acute, grave, and macron/tilde accents can be used to mark stress and vowel length. However, these are generally not written, except in dictionaries and where needed for clarity. In addition, the following digraphs are used, but are treated as sequences of two letters for collation purposes. The "Ch" digraph represents a voiceless velar fricative, while the others are straightforward compositions of their component letters.

Similar Sounds

• Č - same sound as ch, as in chat
• Š - same sound as sh, as in shoot
• Ė same sound as eh, as in yellow, red
• Y/Į - same sound as ee, as in tree
• Ū/Ų - same sound as oo, as in boo
• J - same sound as y, as in yet
• Ž - same sound as zh, as in pleasure

Sounds

Vowels

Lithuanian has 12 written vowels. In addition to the standard Roman letters, the ogonek ('little tail') accent (conventionally known as the caudata) is used to indicate long vowels, and is a historical relic of a time when these vowels were nasalized (as ogonek vowels are in modern Polish), and at an even earlier time had made diphthongs with an 'n' sound.

Consonants

Lithuanian uses 20 consonant characters, drawn from the Roman alphabet. In addition, the digraph "Ch" represents a voiceless velar fricative (IPA [x]); the pronunciation of other digraphs can be deduced from their component elements.

Phonology

Consonants

Each consonant (except [j]) has two forms: palatalized and non-palatalized ([bʲ] - [b],[dʲ] - [d], [ɡʲ] - [ɡ] and so on). The consonants [f x ɣ] and their palatalized versions are only found in loanwords. The consonants preceding vowels [i] and [e] are always moderately palatalized, a feature common to East Slavic languages and not present in the Latvian language.

Unreleased stops are common in the Lithuanian language over released plosives.

(Adapted from http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_02.htm with necessary changes according to Lithuanian Language Encyclopedia^[1])

Vowels

There are two possible ways to organize the Lithuanian vowel system. The traditional pattern has six long vowels and five short ones, with length as its distinctive feature:

(Adapted from http://www.lituanus.org/1982_1/82_1_02.htm and http://www.lituanus.org/1972/72_1_05.htm .)

However, at least one researcher suggests that a tense vs. lax distinction may be the actual distinguishing feature, or may be at least equally important as vowel length.^[2] Such a hypothesis yields the chart below, where 'long' and 'short' have been preserved to parallel the terminology used above.

Unicode

The majority of the Lithuanian alphabet is in the Basic Latin (non accented symbols), and the rest of the Lithuanian alphabet (ąĄčČęĘėĖįĮšŠųŲūŪžŽ) is in the Latin Extended-A.

References