# Latvian and Lithuanian: Do they sound like Slavic languages?



## WannaBeMe

Once I had chance to be present in a camp with students from each part of Europe.
It was amazing to hear all the languages in the same place and in the same time. So I had also chance to hear Latvian and I was wandering how similar accent and pronounciation they have to Serbian or Bosnian. I have heard NO Slavic language sounds so similar in accent to Serbian as Litvanian does.

*Moderator note:*
*This thread managed to survive for almost 2 years when it shouldn't have been here in the first place. OL is about vocabulary and grammar questions, and this thread doesn't belong here.*
*It is now closed.*
*Thanks for your understanding.*


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## Mišo

WannaBeMe said:


> Once I had chance to be present in a camp with students from each part of Europe.
> It was amazing to hear all the languages in the same place and in the same time. So I had also chance to hear Latvian and I was wandering how similar accent and pronounciation they have to Serbian or Bosnian. I have heard NO Slavic language sounds so similar in accent to Serbian as Litvanian does.



Baltic languages are very interesting for me for their separateness, archaism and because they are quarter cousins to slavic languages. I could confirm, that Latvian	utterance  resemble to Serbian, even though I´m not sure, If Latvian has dynamic accent too. Into the bargain, Lithuainian speech sounds like a Russian.


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## deine

Mišo said:


> Into the bargain, Lithuainian speech sounds like a Russian.


 
For me, Lithuanian language do not sound similar like Russian. Maybe this is because I am Lithuanian and for me my language do not sound similar to other language, except Latvian one.


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## sokol

I do not speak a word Lithuanian but I know from hearing alone most Slavic languages to some degree (with active competence worth mentioning only in Slovenian).

And I've just done some hearing exercises in Lithuanian; click on the link given on German Wiki at the end of the document (Litauische Geschichten), there you can access some spoken texts. (I can't post the direct link for copyright reasons.)

To me these Lithuanian samples somehow _do _sound "Slavic", but not like any individual Slavic language I know from hearing. Phonetically I would put it somewhere in between Czech and Russian without being too close to any of these.
(I even can recognise a very few words - which of course is due to common ancestry; Baltic and Slavic languages are not only Indoeuropean, they are also within the IE family related branches.)

So to me Lithuanian indeed has "a Slavic touch" when listening; hadn't I known that this is Lithuanian I probably would have thought at first that it were an exotic Slavic language like Sorbian (of which I know almost nothing and which I've never heard spoken out loud).
When hearing to this text for a second or third time however I surely would have noticed that it couldn't be any Slavic languages as I only can recognise a very few words, and with Slavic languages I should be able to recognise many more.


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## Panda Nocta

Mišo said:


> Into the bargain, Lithuainian speech sounds like a Russian.


I agree with this point. Lithuanian seems to use sounds very similar to that of the Russian language, but it is not true when it comes to its vocabulary.


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## kusurija

I personally, (according to my personal opinion & experience) can't agree with Mišo and Panda Nocta as to accent similarity Lithuanian - Russian. Personally to my ears there is great difference between these languages in accent and accent style. 
Yes, sometimes You can hear talking Lithuanian (language) with hard influence of Russian [or Polish - sometimes] accent (mostly from people, who are other nationality, but speaking Lithuanian or from these Lithuanians, which were under severe influence of Russian accent), but it doesn't mean, that this is the real sound of "native" Lithuanian language. 

I'm not Lithuanian (but I'm quite familiar with this language), so I'm not speaking from position of native Lithuanian speaker, who could naturally feel strong difference with each other language. Neither am I Russian, but am partially familiar with Russian and I can hear Russian (cf. Russian accent) every day and I must speak (poor) Russian often. (I'm Czech). 
For my ears Lithuanian is by accent or accent style more similar to e.g. German or (either) Italian or Czech, then to Russian accent. Russian style of accent differs from lot of languages in Europe, I think. 

As to vocabulary, no one of *living* languages are so similar to Lithuanian, as Latvian is. (Certainly, if we accept Samogithian as real language - not only as dialect of Lithuanian - in this case Samogithian is more similar)
The similarities (vocabulary, grammar...) between Baltic and Slavis families of languages by my opinion are not so severe argument so we could say, that they are _significantly_ more relative then other pair of language families. This "more"  is only in some very little(+-neglectable) degree.

May I'm not right so far, these are only _my_ opinions.


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## Saluton

My impression is that yes, Latvian sounds like Russian. I haven't heard Lithuanian. Moldavian and Romanian resemble Russian much less, maybe just a bit, and Bulgarian sounds almost exactly like Russian, it's even closer to Russian than Ukrainian is, phonetically.


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## Panda Nocta

> Yes, sometimes You can hear talking Lithuanian (language) with hard influence of Russian [or Polish - sometimes] accent (mostly from people, who are other nationality, but speaking Lithuanian or from these Lithuanians, which were under severe influence of Russian accent), but it doesn't mean, that this is the real sound of "native" Lithuanian language.


My acquaintance with Lithuanian comes primarily from Internet Radios, different speeches of different people (some of whom ought to be ethnical Lithuanians), songs, etc.

Your mentioning Italian is interesting here since I have been always thinking the Italian sound is the closest to the Russian sound, at least among non-Slavic languages.

However, unlike Saluton, I don't think Latvian resembles Russian by its sound.


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## sokol

kusurija said:


> (...) For my ears Lithuanian is by accent or accent style more similar to e.g. German or (either) Italian or Czech, then to Russian accent. Russian style of accent differs from lot of languages in Europe, I think.


I thought too that Lithuanian - concerning accent - doesn't sound at all Russian but I wouldn't say that it is that close to Italian or German (closer to German than to Italian is what I'd say); what I _have _noticed - or think I have noticed - is a striking similarity to Czech accent.

(The problem for me noticing a similarity between German and Lithuanian of course also might be that I just know German intonation too well and therefore notice that Lithuanian is definitely different.)

But phonetically I still hear sounds quite similar to Russian ones.
Therefore, in my other post in this thread, my statement "in-between Russian and Czech", strange as this probably may sound to many.




kusurija said:


> As to vocabulary, no one of *living* languages are so similar to Lithuanian, as Latvian is. (...) The similarities (vocabulary, grammar...) between Baltic and Slavis families of languages by my opinion are not so severe argument so we could say, that they are _significantly_ more relative then other pair of language families.


The Balto-Slavic relationship is not subject to doubt, as far as I know. Some words are very similar both in shape and meaning (Lithuanian - Slovenian, those that are recognisable by hearing alone: žemė = zemlja/earth, miestą - mesto/town, trečias - tretje/third, kai - which I heard as 'kaj' but obviously is 'kdaj'/when).

Of course most likely you can't grasp even the content of a simple, single sentence of Lithuanian if you only know a Slavic language (or more of them); you only recognise a very few words, and you might hear phonetic similarities - which I do.


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## deine

Ones Estonian guy told me that Lithuanian language sounds similar to Portuguese. Interesting...


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## OldAvatar

Saluton said:


> My impression is that yes, Latvian sounds like Russian. I haven't heard Lithuanian. Moldavian and Romanian resemble Russian much less, maybe just a bit, and Bulgarian sounds almost exactly like Russian, it's even closer to Russian than Ukrainian is, phonetically.



1. Moldovan and Romanian are the same language.
2. Romanian resembles Russians much less than what?
Despite the 15% of Slavic origin vocabulary, Romanian is a Romance language and it may "resemble" Italian or Portuguese, if you like, but not Russian.


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## WannaBeMe

I wouldn´t agree that Latvian sounds like Czech, It sounds quite Russian but also Serbian   , not obligatorly Serbian Serbian but more like Bosnian Serbian becouse of its very long vocals. It sounds like a Russian speaking Bosnian or Serbain, hehe. Thus, the pronounciation is more like Russian but also hard like BCS and one special function have diftongs in Latvian. BCS has actualy no diftongs but it is very often that two vocals are located next to eachother. I can´t explaint it better; you have to hear it to be able to understand what I mean.


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## WannaBeMe

Oh, I am so sorry, I ment only Latvian at my first post. I have written wrong "Litvanian" instead of Latvian. I have never heard Lithuanian so I want to apologize to you. Sorry it was a misundersanding!


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## Imants

deine said:


> Ones Estonian guy told me that Lithuanian language sounds similar to Portuguese. Interesting...


Well, Portuguese does sound Slavic. I've heard it many times from many different people. 

To answer the original question: I also think that Lithuanian sounds very Slavic. Hard to say to which language though. It's like something between Polish and Russian. Perhaps the closest sounding one would be Belarusian?


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## astlanda

Imants said:


> I also think that Lithuanian sounds very Slavic. Hard to say to which language though. It's like something between Polish and Russian. Perhaps the closest sounding one would be Belarusian?



Lithuanian sounds like Lithuanian and Latvian sounds like Latvian, but when a Lithuanian speaks a foreign language with his strong accent, then I might think that he is Russian. Latvian accent is almost Finnic. I've been mistaken several times, when a Latvian speaks Russian to think, he is an Estonian. Even, when they speak Latvian and they are too far to hear clearly, I may think the language is Estonian.

By the way - the official language of Lithuanian Duchy was kind of ancient Belarusian and some people in Belarus still think they are descendants of mighty Litwa.


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## Russianer

WannaBeMe said:


> Once I had chance to be present in a camp with students from each part of Europe.
> It was amazing to hear all the languages in the same place and in the same time. So I had also chance to hear Latvian and I was wandering how similar accent and pronounciation they have to Serbian or Bosnian. I have heard NO Slavic language sounds so similar in accent to Serbian as Litvanian does.


 
Latvian is not similar to Russian:
For example:

Black sea(in English)= 
=Melna jura(in Latvian)= Чёрное море(Сhornoe more)(in Russian)
*****************************************
I love you (in English)= 
=Es milu tevi (in Latvian)= Я тебя люблю(Ya tebya lyublyu)(in Russian)
*****************************************************
East (in English)= 
=Austrumi (in Latvian)= Восток(Vostok)(in Russian).
****************************************************
yes (in English)= ja (in Latvian)= ja(in German)= да (da)(in Russian) 
******************************************


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## WannaBeMe

Russianer said:


> Latvian is not similar to Russian:
> For example:
> 
> Black sea(in English)=
> =Melna jura(in Latvian)= Чёрное море(Сhornoe more)(in Russian)
> *****************************************
> I love you (in English)=
> =Es milu tevi (in Latvian)= Я тебя люблю(Ya tebya lyublyu)(in Russian) Az miluju tebe (I think this sounds quite similar. It´s not Russian but OCS)
> *****************************************************
> East (in English)=
> =Austrumi (in Latvian)= Восток(Vostok)(in Russian).
> ****************************************************
> yes (in English)= ja (in Latvian)= ja(in German)= да (da)(in Russian)
> ******************************************


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## Russianer

*WannaBeMe:*

You did quote my answer.
Do you have any questions?
I am from Russia.
I know Russian language and know about Latvian language.
The languages are very different languages with different 
dictionaries of words and with different grammatic rules.


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## WannaBeMe

Sorry, no questions, I have just been to lazy to write the whole sentence again. 
It is hard to say what does "VERY different" mean. The one predecessor of Russian language , let call it Old-Russian was similar to Latvian but the predecessor of Old-Russian was even VERY similar to Latvian. So I would say, something must have stayed in Russian too that makes it similar to Latvian. I would rather say Russian is, if just a little bit, but still similar to Latvian because some similarities are approved and evident and this doesn´t mean that Latvian and German have also some similarities.

Very different languages are Russian and Japanese or Arabic languages but Latvian no.


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## Russianer

WannaBeMe said:


> Sorry, no questions, I have just been to lazy to write the whole sentence again.
> It is hard to say what does "VERY different" mean. The one predecessor of Russian language , let call it Old-Russian was similar to Latvian but the predecessor of Old-Russian was even VERY similar to Latvian."


 
Prove it.
Do you speak Russian? Вы говорите по-русски?
Do you speak Latvian? Vai jus runajat latviski?
************************************************
For example, in Russian there are a lot of words of French origine.
(репертуар, будуар, тротуар, бижутерия,бульвар,декольте итд.) 
but do you think about Russian language similar to French language?


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## WannaBeMe

Russianer said:


> Prove it.
> Do you speak Russian? Вы говорите по-русски?
> Do you speak Latvian? Vai jus runajat latviski?
> ************************************************
> For example, in Russian there are a lot of words of French origine.
> (репертуар, будуар, тротуар, бижутерия,бульвар,декольте итд.)
> but do you think about Russian language similar to French language?


 
You cant compare languages this way, it requires a comletely all-round analysis of phonetic system, accents, grammar, ethimology and so on.

First of all: phonetic system is almost identical to most of Slavic languages, including Russian (Russian is a unique language because of its very soft consonants but still its a Slavic language) and I think you as Russian should have no problems to pronounciate any Latvian voice or letter, do you? But German t,d,ö,ü,ä or English th, and other 20 vocals you couldn´t learn it in 20 years (I don´t mean you, I mean in generaly);
Pitch accent, level tone, falling tone, you can find it only in Sweden,Latvian,Lithuanian and Serbian (together with Bosnian and Croatian); Perhaps nothing to do with Russian but it was one of the topic of this thread.
Ok let us compare a few words which are originaly Latvian and Russian or Slavic:

Cilveks- čelovek, človek (protoslavic- čelvekus);
Ne-ne (protoslavic-ne);
Compare all numbers, then find me one nonslavic language with more similar numbers than Latvian or Lithuanian!
dien-den;
prefix ne- in negations like nekad-nikagda (Serbian-nikad);
vakar-večer (k-č, I hope you know sth. about Slavic and Baltic palatalization);
sirds-serdce;
sedet-sedit;
stavat-stojit; (Besides, name one language that has infinitive ending on -t and it isnt Russian or any Slavic language);

I could do this till tomorow but I must go now, I have training of SAMBO (you must know what it is) hehe. I +ll continue next time.


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## astlanda

Well, Draugi!

Latvian IS a very special an interesting European language. It has many similarities with Slavic languages, but it does not sound like Russian or Polish for my ears. It sounds like Lithuanian spoken with heavy Finnish accent.

Even Swedish has similarities with Baltic languages: 
Swedish: barn (kid), Latvian: berns (kid), Lithuanian: bierniukas (boy)
Swedish: gata (street), Latvian & Lithuanian: gatve (street)
Swedish: ugn (oven), Latvian uguns (fire)

Latin has similarities both with Latvian and Russian:
Latin: vir (man), Latvian: virs (man)

Latin: stas, Russian: staish, English: you stand
 Latin: das, Russian: daish, English: you give
  Latin: vedet, Russian: vidiet, English: he sees
  Latin: sedet, Russian: sidit, English: he sits

What is this quarrel about?
All thes languages are related.



WannaBeMe said:


> First of all: phonetic system is almost identical to most of Slavic languages, including Russian (Russian is a unique language because of its very soft consonants but still its a Slavic language) and I think you as Russian should have no problems to pronounciate any Latvian voice or letter, do you? But German t,d,ö,ü,ä or English th, and other 20 vocals you couldn´t learn it in 20 years



I'm afraid, that at least Russians will have big problem with correct pronounciation short and long vowels and "e" in Latvian: berns.


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## Imants

WannaBeMe said:


> Once I had chance to be present in a camp with students from each part of Europe.
> It was amazing to hear all the languages in the same place and in the same time. So I had also chance to hear Latvian and I was wandering how similar accent and pronounciation they have to Serbian or Bosnian. I have heard NO Slavic language sounds so similar in accent to Serbian as Litvanian does.


I'd just like to remind us that the question is about the sound of the languages. Not necessarily about the grammar, vocabulary, syntax, or such.

For example Portuguese is not a Slavic language, yet a lot of people agree that it sounds Slavic.

Cheers!


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## Revans

WannaBeMe said:


> ... I think you as Russian should have no problems to pronounciate any Latvian voice or letter, do you?...


 
That's completely wrong!
There are a lot of problems for Russians (and might be for other nations, too) to pronounce many Latvian sounds.
It includes all the long vowels: ā, ē, ī, ū, o, as well as all the consonants written with cedilla: ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ. I haven't heard any Russian people here in Latvia who could pronounce them properly. Of course, it's understandable. No one could if there are nothing similar in their language.
Yeah, one third of habitants of Latvia are Russians and most of them don't even try to learn the state language. Maybe the reason is, it's too complicated 
There are also difficulties to pronounce the vowel "o" correctly. It has three different sounds (short, long and diphthong), but when written it's always just "o". So you have no clue have to pronounce the word with "o" unless you have heard (or have learned) it before.
In Latvian ALWAYS the first syllable is stressed. Contrary in Russian.
In addition, everyone has spelled the examples with Latvian words incorrect! You have to use lengthening marks, cedillas and carons to represent the pronunciation correctly.
For example: 
Melnā jūra (instead of Melna jura - that's typical, how Russians would pronounce the word - without long vowels)
sēdēt (-"- sedet - it sounds really funny and many Latvians wouldn't understand what you mean)
ceļš [way] (-"- cels - in that way even the meaning of the word are different now. It means "he will lift").

Hey, I am not petty! Just wanted to explain things, only native speaker could do. I am Latvian and I really can assure that any Slavic language and both Baltic languages together are too far different. We can't deny we have some (there are really not many of them - a thousand maybe) similar words to Slavic ones, but we have thousands of words which are similar to German and Sweden, too. And that's because of the history - the nations which have been settled in the territory of Latvia and Lithuania.
To sum up, come to Latvia, get out of the Riga, find a nice place for living somewhere in a little town or country. There you can hear cleaner and more identical Latvian language. Then post again your opinion how similar it is to Russian. While we have a border with Russia it doesn't mean that nations and our language are similar. Polish and German aren't similar, too, are they?


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## WannaBeMe

Revans said:


> That's completely wrong!
> There are a lot of problems for Russians (and might be for other nations, too) to pronounce many Latvian sounds.
> It includes all the long vowels: ā, ē, ī, ū, o, as well as all the consonants written with cedilla: ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ. I haven't heard any Russian people here in Latvia who could pronounce them properly. Of course, it's understandable. No one could if there are nothing similar in their language.
> Yeah, one third of habitants of Latvia are Russians and most of them don't even try to learn the state language. Maybe the reason is, it's too complicated
> There are also difficulties to pronounce the vowel "o" correctly. It has three different sounds (short, long and diphthong), but when written it's always just "o". So you have no clue have to pronounce the word with "o" unless you have heard (or have learned) it before.
> In Latvian ALWAYS the first syllable is stressed. Contrary in Russian.
> In addition, everyone has spelled the examples with Latvian words incorrect! You have to use lengthening marks, cedillas and carons to represent the pronunciation correctly.
> For example:
> Melnā jūra (instead of Melna jura - that's typical, how Russians would pronounce the word - without long vowels)
> sēdēt (-"- sedet - it sounds really funny and many Latvians wouldn't understand what do you mean)
> ceļš [way] (-"- cels - in that way even the meaning of the word are different now. It means "he will lift").
> 
> Hey, I am not petty! Just wanted to explain things, only native speaker could do. I am Latvian and I really can assure that any Slavic language and both Baltic languages are too far different. We can't deny we have some (there are really not many of them) similar words to Slavic ones, but we have thousands of words which are similar to German and Sweden, too. And that's because of the history - the nations which have been settled in the territory of Latvia and Lithuania.
> To sum up, come to Latvia, get out of the Riga, find a nice place for living somewhere in a little town or country. There you can hear cleaner and more identical Latvian language. Then post again your opinion how similar it is to Russian. While we have a border with Russia it doesn't mean that nations and our language are similar. Polish and German aren't similar, too, are they?


 
All right Revans , I appreciate your oppinion and thank you. If you say so it must be so, you are Latvian , you know it better than me  . I have never learned Latvian actively. I only have had a chanse to hear it one time and I have remarked it sounded in my ears like my own language but with a little bit Russian pronounciation. 

Without offence, there is no need to emphasize that Slavic languages are the last wich your language is cognated with. Nobody intend to take you distignity of your language. I do realy astonish gorgeousness of your language because of its almost perfectly saved IE-attributes but I think that your comment about NONexistence of linguisticly relations between ANY Slavic language and BOTH Baltic languages is based on subjective negative feelings about Slavs upon Russians because I doubt you have knowledges of ALL Slavic languages. 
I speak two Germanic, two Romanic, many Slavic languages and have big knowledge about all other Slavic , Romanic and Germanic languages and I think I can pretty shure, well recognize similarities which concern not only 
vocabulary but also morphology, sintax, phonology and in this case very important details like palatalisations, diphtongs, nasal vowels and so on between MANY Slavic languages and BOTH Baltic languages which I cannot say for Baltic and Teutonic languages like Swedish or German. Of course there are also SOME similarities between Baltic and Teutonic languages but not in such dimension like before mentioned. What I will say is that both Baltic languages are the closest to Slavic group and it must not be via versa.
Its my personal oppinion and nobody must accept it. 

Thank you for invitation, I appriciate your hospitality, I will concern that, not such a bed idea.


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## astlanda

WannaBeMe said:


> Without offence, there is no need to emphasize that Slavic languages are the last wich your language is cognated with.


He did not say that.



WannaBeMe said:


> What I will say is that both Baltic languages are the closest to Slavic group and it must not be via versa.


I agree with that.



WannaBeMe said:


> I speak two Germanic, two Romanic, many Slavic languages and have big knowledge about all other Slavic , Romanic and Germanic languages and I think I can pretty shure, well recognize similarities which concern not only
> vocabulary but also morphology, sintax, phonology and in this case very important details like palatalisations, diphtongs, nasal vowels and so on between MANY Slavic languages and BOTH Baltic languages which I cannot say for Baltic and Teutonic languages like Swedish or German.


As much as I know, there is no nasal vowel left in modern Baltic languages as well as the opposition of short and long vowels has been almost lost in the Slavic branch.




WannaBeMe said:


> ... which I cannot say for Baltic and Teutonic languages like Swedish or German.
> ...
> Of course there are also SOME similarities between Baltic and Teutonic languages but not in such dimension like before mentioned.


Germanic languages have changed more than Baltic & Slavic ones. You should compare them with Gothic, Islandic or Faroese.

I have found quite some similarities of Baltic and Scandinavian languages.
At least all of them are tonal.


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## Revans

WannaBeMe, Astlanda, thank you, for your opninion and comments!



wannabeme said:


> ...I think that your comment about nonexistence of linguisticly relations between any slavic language and both baltic languages is based on subjective negative feelings about slavs upon russians because i doubt you have knowledges of all slavic languages.


 
Yup, I didn't say that. 
That's right, Baltic languages are the closest to Slavik languages. They belong to one Balto-Slavic branch and are more connected than with any other Indo-European language. But nowadays that branch divides. One part goes for Slavic and other for three Baltic languages: Latvian, Lithuanian and Prussian (extincted).


I can agree that Baltic & Slavic languages have changed quite less. At least I know it about Latvian. We still use a lot of very old words, especially related to nature, natural phenomenas, food, raw materials. It's proved that some of them could be dated even with 13th century and earlier. At that time and later many of the words were borrowed from closer nations as well as they took some of Baltic words. For example, you can find quite many Baltic words in Finnish and Estonian. We borrowed a lot of words from German (~1700) and Livonian(nowadays - nearly extincted, only a few people in Latvia can speak it). Later when Christianity was introduced in the region we got some Russian words: baznīca (church), zvanīt (to ring the bell), grēks (sin), nedēļa (week).

It's still specific we relate (or derive) one word to several different things.
For example, if I take one word "celt" (lift, build) I can derive it to bunch of other similar words and then each of that word relates to many different things: cilāt (heave), cildīt (dignify), cildināt (dignify), cēls (noble), cildens (noble), izcils (excellent), cēlējs (builder or a person, who lifts something up), celtuve, cilas, cēliens, celms, celis, ceļš, celtniecība ... If we add a prefix, it changes the meaning of the word again. We can do it for each word at least with 2 to 6 prefixes. 
For example: celt -> pacelt, nocelt, izcelt, pārcelt, iecelt, uzcelt. 
All of them are related to lifting, but each of them - for a different situation. In English there are different words for each of them, but in Latvian we have one word instead of six. For Baltic languages it has kept, while other languages has already changed it.


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## WannaBeMe

astlanda said:


> He did not say that.


 
No, not at all, he didn´t say it  , he only wrote that we cannot deny that in Latvian there are SOME similar words with Slavic one (and he POINTED thus EMPHASIZED that there are REAAALY NOT MANY of them), while there are THOUUUSENDS of words in Latvian which are similar to Sweden and German. LOL
My inteligence is to limited to be able to understand that REALY NOT MANY could mean THOUSEND and that THOUSENDS means MORE than REALY NOT MANY. Thank you Ravens for your understanding me and changing your statement, now I now what did you mean.

Long vowels have been lost only in modern Polish, all other Slavic languages does have it and these vowels must not be stressed. The best example for it are BCS Serbian, BCS Bosnian, BCS Montenegrian, Slovak; by the way BCS languages have melodic accentuation with 4 different accents simmilar like Swedish.

Unfortunately there is not so many people which are realy competent to say something more about realationship between Baltic and Slavic languages because Slavs rarely speak Baltic languages ( as Revens mentioned ) and contrariwise.


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## astlanda

WannaBeMe said:


> Long vowels have been lost only in modern Polish, all other Slavic languages does have it and these vowels must not be stressed. The best example for it are BCS Serbian, BCS Bosnian, BCS Montenegrian, Slovak besides BCS languages have melodic accentuation with 4 different accents simmilar like Swedish.



Sorry. I 'm not familiar with BCS, even though I think I can understand a lot of it, when I hear it in TV, but it's interesting to know. I thought that long vowels (where they exist) must be stressed in Slavic languages other than BCS, Czeck and Slovak, but in Latvian the long unstressed vowels are very characteric.  As for tonality, I think the Baltic system is 10 times more difficult for me than Swedish or Chinese and it's fonologic there. E.G. meaning of Latvian "zale" varies according to it's tone, but I'm no expert to explain that.



WannaBeMe said:


> Unfortunately there is not so many people which are realy competent to say something more about realationship between Baltic and Slavic languages because Slavs rarely speak Baltic languages ( as Revens mentioned ) and contrariwise.


I totally disagree:
http://www.geonames.de/wl-balto-slavic.html

Most of the Balts speak at least one Slavic language, if you adress them politely enough. As well as almost all Slavs of Lithuania speak at least one Baltic language.


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## Mišo

WannaBeMe said:


> Slovak besides BCS languages have melodic accentuation with 4 different accents simmilar like Swedish.



Are you sure?
Why?
Which 4 different accents have you meant?
In literary Slovak?
If you thave thought  long vowels, we have only one kind of them. 
Maybe two, but this come from the fact, that in Slovak has not be long vowel stressed. 
This only could Swedish has too (I do not know) and in other features it is incompatible.
First syllable stress with unstressed deep lenghts makes reputable Slovak a bit more monotonous, than expressly melodic.
You can find melodic Slovak just in valleys of central Slovakia, where dynamic stress has been survived.


----------



## WannaBeMe

Mišo said:


> Are you sure?
> Why?
> Which 4 different accents have you meant?
> In literary Slovak?
> If you thave thought long vowels, we have only one kind of them.
> Maybe two, but this come from the fact, that in Slovak has not be long vowel stressed.
> This only could Swedish has too (I do not know) and in other features it is incompatible.
> First syllable stress with unstressed deep lenghts makes reputable Slovak a bit more monotonous, than expressly melodic.
> You can find melodic Slovak just in valleys of central Slovakia, where dynamic stress has been survived.


 
I am sorry Mišo, I thought only about BCS concerning 4 acctentual system.  I should have written "by the way" instead of "besides".


----------



## astlanda

WannaBeMe said:


> Long vowels have been lost only in modern Polish, all other Slavic languages does have it and these vowels must not be stressed.



Give me an example of a Russian not stressed but long vowel , please,.


----------



## WannaBeMe

astlanda said:


> Give me an example of a Russian not stressed but long vowel , please,.


 
No I cant give you an example of a Russian long, non stressed vowel.

But I think this schould be possible in Nord-Russian dialects. I am not shure , I got to check my assumption.


----------



## neonrider

I'm not a linguist, but by my opinion Lithuanian language has some influence from it's neighbouring languages including Russian language, yet it's clearly a distinct Indo-European language, not Slavic and not Germanic, not Romance, yet you could say it has similarities with most European and Asian languages, even the Iranian, Arabic and to some extent even with Japanese.

I'll start with Nihongo (Japanese):

(Lithuanians) Watch this video first: (it won't allow to post a URL, so just Google this phrase for YOUTUBE: "oshiri kajiri mushi" .

Now tell me, did you understand a word? The "oshiri kajiri mushi" translates as "butt-biting bugs". "Kajiri" ("kajitte" - to bite) means "biting" which in Lithuanian is "kandziojantys" (pronounced as "kahn-jyo-yan-tees"). "Mushi" is "bugs" but in lithuanian "muse" is a fly or a flying bug. In Japanese "mushi kanda" = "muse kanda" in Lithuanian (a fly, a bug bites). A mere coincidence?

OK, if it's a coincidence, then how about this:

Japanese/Lithuanian: "katai oshiri" = "kieti uzpakaliai" (hard butts). The word "hard = katai = kieti" is clearly similar, or another coincidence.

More:

JAP / LT

Desu ne? = Ar ne? (incomplete sentence)


Desu ka? = Ar ka? (arba tiesiog "ka?" gale sakinio)  (klausimas) = what? (question)


ikimasho = eikime (let's go)

where "ikimas" = "ejimas" (walking motion).

Japanese / Lithuanian: "Anata" = "ana, ta, anoji, anas" (that person, he, she).

Japanese / Lithuanian: "watashi" = "ash" (I, me) (the "ash" at the end matches.

This one is funny but true:

Japanese / Lithuanian: "oppai" = "papai" (tits, breasts, mother's milk).

Japanese / Lithuanian: "kochi-kochi" = "kuti-kuti" (tickle tickle)

Japanese / Lithuanian: "kochimas" = "kutenimas" (tickling action).

There are some more, but I lost the note with the rest.

Perhaps Lithuanian - Ainu connection? Or perhaps I'm entirely wrong, but that's what I noticed when speaking to japanese.

Also...

Nenets are Mongoloids and their language is  Ugro-Finnic.
http : // www . geocities . com /Vienna/3259/fnen-eng.html
I found words similar to Lithuanian:

ENGLISH = NENETS = LITHUANIAN

CROW = warngei = varna

LEAF = wiepa = lapas

DAGGER = kar = kardas

TO LIVE = jiwa = gyventi (jiw = gyv)

Cough = koot = koset

Regarding Russian connection it's very easy:

LT/RU:

Varna - varona (crow)
Grybas - gryb (mushroom)
Gyvas - zhivoj (indo-european) (alive)
Eiti - idti (to go)


Vanduo - voda (water)
Shviesa - sviet (light)
Stiklas - steklo (glass)
Stalas - stol (table)

Now French language link:

Oops, again, it does not allow to post a link, so just go to "translate dot google dot com" and translate "tu esi jauna" from Lithuanian into French.

Iranian:

Asht = ashtuoni (eight)

So as it seems many languages in the world are more or less related, just like the air we breath and the water we drink is shared and recycled from dead bodies into our rivers and lakes and our water supply.


----------



## WannaBeMe

neonrider said:


> I'm not a linguist, but by my opinion Lithuanian language has some influence from it's neighbouring languages including Russian language, yet it's clearly a distinct Indo-European language, not Slavic and not Germanic, not Romance, yet you could say it has similarities with most European and Asian languages, even the Iranian, Arabic and to some extent even with Japanese.
> 
> Why even Iranian? Iranian is a IE language and you forgot Indian languages and Arabian maybe only borrowing but nothing more. And with Japanese possible the borrowings from Mongolians over Ugrofinic group, I hope you know that Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Mongolian are related languages to eachother.
> 
> I'll start with Nihongo (Japanese):
> 
> (Lithuanians) Watch this video first: (it won't allow to post a URL, so just Google this phrase for YOUTUBE: "oshiri kajiri mushi" .
> 
> Now tell me, did you understand a word? The "oshiri kajiri mushi" translates as "butt-biting bugs". "Kajiri" ("kajitte" - to bite) means "biting" which in Lithuanian is "kandziojantys" (pronounced as "kahn-jyo-yan-tees") Serbian-kandžijati-to baet, it must be a borrowing from Mongolians or Turks - (tur.) kanci- flog
> "Mushi" is "bugs" but in lithuanian "muse" - (serb). muha, mušica (a little fly) is a fly or a flying bug. In Japanese "mushi kanda" = "muse kanda" in Lithuanian (a fly, a bug bites). A mere coincidence?
> 
> OK, if it's a coincidence, then how about this:
> 
> Japanese/Lithuanian: "katai oshiri" = "kieti uzpakaliai" (hard butts). The word "hard = katai = kieti" is clearly similar, or another coincidence. If not coincidence than borowing from Finic or even Mongolian or Turkish (Just one possibility)
> 
> More:
> 
> JAP / LT
> 
> Desu ne? = Ar ne? (incomplete sentence)
> 
> 
> Desu ka? = Ar ka? (arba tiesiog "ka?" gale sakinio) (klausimas) = what? (question)
> ka is interrogative particle in Japanese, and almost all interrogative pronouns in Baltic but also Slavic and Italic languages begin with a k-. Its an IE attribute.
> 
> 
> ikimasho = eikime (let's go) (serb.) idemo
> 
> where "ikimas" = "ejimas" (walking motion).
> 
> Japanese / Lithuanian: "Anata" = "ana, ta, anoji, anas" (that person, he, she). (serb. on, ona, ono -he,she,it; taj, ta, to-that)
> 
> Japanese / Lithuanian: "watashi" = "ash" (I, me) (the "ash" at the end matches.
> (bulg.) az- I, me
> 
> This one is funny but true:
> 
> Japanese / Lithuanian: "oppai" = "papai" (tits, breasts, mother's milk).
> 
> Japanese / Lithuanian: "kochi-kochi" = "kuti-kuti" (tickle tickle)
> 
> Japanese / Lithuanian: "kochimas" = "kutenimas" (tickling action).
> 
> There are some more, but I lost the note with the rest.
> 
> Perhaps Lithuanian - Ainu connection? Or perhaps I'm entirely wrong, but that's what I noticed when speaking to japanese.
> 
> Also...
> 
> Nenets are Mongoloids and their language is Ugro-Finnic.
> http : // www . geocities . com /Vienna/3259/fnen-eng.html
> I found words similar to Lithuanian:
> 
> ENGLISH = NENETS = LITHUANIAN=SERBIAN
> 
> CROW = warngei = varna = vrana
> 
> LEAF = wiepa = lapas = list
> 
> DAGGER = kar = kardas
> 
> TO LIVE = jiwa = gyventi (jiw = gyv) = živeti (OCS: živenti)
> 
> Cough = koot = koset = kašalj n. kašljati, kahnuti v.
> 
> Regarding Russian connection it's very easy:
> 
> LT/RU:
> 
> Varna - varona (crow)
> Grybas - gryb (mushroom)
> Gyvas - zhivoj (indo-european) (alive)
> Eiti - idti (to go)
> 
> 
> Vanduo - voda (water)
> Shviesa - sviet (light)
> Stiklas - steklo (glass)
> Stalas - stol (table)
> 
> Now French language link:
> 
> Oops, again, it does not allow to post a link, so just go to "translate dot google dot com" and translate "tu esi jauna" from Lithuanian into French.
> 
> Wow, cool translator, thanks  Onto Serbian : Ti jesi mlada (but we have some other words with the stem jaun like Junoša- jung boy or junac- jung bull. An interesting word. also related to germ. jung and lat juvenis.
> 
> Iranian:
> 
> Asht = ashtuoni (eight) osam <<< ostimu
> 
> So as it seems many languages in the world are more or less related, just like the air we breath and the water we drink is shared and recycled from dead bodies into our rivers and lakes and our water supply.


 
I agree


----------



## neonrider

Zdravo WannaBeMe,

Kako si imas'? I used to have pen-pals in Jugoslavija during 1980s. We corresponded in SP-HR jezik. I agree with all your comments except one - Nihongo (Japanese language) is not related to Mongolian and Turkic languages at all, except one borrowed word "atama" (head). That I know for sure. Korean in some way sounds a bit like Turkic endings with some  Mongolian, but I'm not an expert on Korean. I go by "how it reads & sounds". Japanese is a language on it's own and I'd put it along with other Pacific languages, but not really related to them (hawaiian, fijian, tuvalu, samoan, maori, etc.) Japanese has "kanji" (characters, "hyeroglyphs", not bites ) borrowed from Chinese, but their Kana is purely Japanese writing system. There are borrowed Chinese words in Japanese language, but japanese is a very beautiful language with almost 50% of vowels and I don't notice any (except atama) similarity with Altai-Turkic language group, such as Mongolian, Turkic or even Korean, although some say that Japanese has some similarity to Korean, but not a lot and it's probably a borrowed one. Japanese were isolated for a long time, although 10's of thous. years ago they may have come from Central Asia or Tibet. There's some "recent" Portuguese influence on Japan, and, of course, American....  To learn Japanese dance is too expensive for Japanese, so they learn Hula or Flamenco instead, which works towards kind of destruction of old Japanese culture. Anyway, I just wanted to say that Japanese has no "modern" relation with the Mainland languages. If you think I'm wrong, please present facts and "proof".

Dovidenja & iki

N/R


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## neonrider

I'm going to add numerals from 1 to 12 here. If you care, please add translation in your own language:

EN / LT / RU / PL

One / Vie'nas (viens) / Odin / Jeden
Two / Du / Dva / Dwa
Three / Trys / Try / Trzy
Four / Keturi' / Chetyure / Cztery
Five / Penki' / Pyat' / Pie'c
Six / Sheshi' / Shest' / Szesc'
Seven / Septyni' / Sem' / Siedem
Eight / Ashtuoni' / Osem' / Osiem
Nine / Devyni' / Devyat' / Dziewie'c
Ten / Deshimt* / Desyat' / Dziesiec
Eleven / Vienuo'lika / Odinnadsat' / Jedenascie
Twelve / Dvy'lika / Dvenadsat' / Dwanascie

The "'" sign is either for accent or for soft letter.
Perhaps I made a couple errors... 

* The Lithuanian "e" as in "deshimt" are pronounced as "ae" or "a" with two dots on top rather than "eh" and is more but not exactly as "dya'shimt". The other "e" with a single dot on top of it pronounced rather as "eh" similar to the last "e" in French word "Liberte". I wish that Lithuanian alphabet had it's transcription simplified using English and German -like letters, but not everyone agrees with that, of course. L


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## astlanda

A lot of it is bare coincidence.



neonrider said:


> Desu ne? = Ar ne? (incomplete sentence)
> 
> Desu = copula
> ne = Japanese: confirmative interrogative (more likely related to Korean confirmative "ne")
> ne = Lithuanian: negation
> ka = Japanese: general interrogative
> ka = Lithuanian: abbreviated interrogative substantive
> 
> 
> ikimasho = Japanese: < iku
> eikime = Lithuanian: < eiti
> 
> etc.



About numerals:
http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml


----------



## Revans

WannaBeMe said:


> Once I had chance to be present in a camp with students from each part of Europe.
> It was amazing to hear all the languages in the same place and in the same time. So I had also chance to hear Latvian and I was wandering how similar accent and pronounciation they have to Serbian or Bosnian. I have heard NO Slavic language sounds so similar in accent to Serbian as Litvanian does.


 
Ok, back to topic!
I'd like to give you a link where you can hear how Latvian language sounds!
http://www.pasakas.net/pasakas/latviesu_tautas_pasakas/m/majas_pele_un_lauku_pele/

There (in the web site) are a lot of Latvian (not only) tales (I'd say hundreds) spoken by native speakers - Latvians.
You can choose tales by clicking the letters at the top of the page, then click "play"! They are in alphabetical order. You can listen to the tale and follow the given text, too.

And so, it would be nice to hear your thoughts. Does the language truly sounds Slavic or does it sounds similar to any other language?

Good luck!


----------



## neonrider

I think Latvian (by foreigner's ears) may sound a bit like Czech or slightly Serbo-Croatian (intonation only). It has Ugro-Finn pronounciation to it and if a little bit Germanic, with some Lithuanian. Just like some people would think that a Lithuanian language sounds a bit Bulgarian or French. In fact, when I travel around in Europe, people usually ask if I'm from Sweden (by appearance) but by language when I speak to other Lithuanians they always ask if we are French. Even in the USA they usualy ask if we are French. Even Russians from Russia and those who lived in Lithuania they thought we were French. They never ask whether I am Russian or Ukrainian or Lithuanian, yet in USA recently they always ask if I am a German, Russian or Ukrainian, because to them anyone White that does not look exactly Irish is a Russian. Only one person said Lithuania without being hinted. Because I have a typical Lithuanian accent, with some Germanic and perhaps some Russian in it sometimes, especially when swearing. So it is not surprising that Latvian might by 1% or 5% sound Serbian, because I speak Serbian a bit and I know how it sounds and I understand what WannaBeMe means. It just sounds to him, it doesn't mean it does or it is. And in fact, I notice some similarities between Baltic and southern Slavic and Hungarian languages too. Not only by words, but by some phrases and even slightly by shared culture. Same with the UK. When you live outside of Europe, like I do, you notice a lot of common things between ANY Europeans that you insiders don't notice. I notice similarity in culture between Balts and Brits, Russians, Italians and Spaniards, etc. etc. the fashion, the phrases they use etc. etc. Even similarities with west and central Asia as well. Not so much similarities with more distant lands like eastern Asia or Africa though, except for the very old ties. I also would like to mention behavioural similarities, the way Europeans walk, act and speak are similar region to region. Also I think Balts have moved to the area from or through the Balkans and Central Asia, Turkey, Greece. We have similarities with Greece too. Also with Pakistan and Iran as well. Look into some faces.


----------



## WannaBeMe

Revans said:


> Ok, back to topic!
> I'd like to give you a link where you can hear how Latvian language sounds!
> http://www.pasakas.net/pasakas/latviesu_tautas_pasakas/m/majas_pele_un_lauku_pele/
> 
> There (in the web site) are a lot of Latvian (not only) tales (I'd say hundreds) spoken by native speakers - Latvians.
> You can choose tales by clicking the letters at the top of the page, then click "play"! They are in alphabetical order. You can listen to the tale and follow the given text, too.
> 
> And so, it would be nice to hear your thoughts. Does the language truly sounds Slavic or does it sounds similar to any other language?
> 
> Good luck!


 
To my ears it sounds like a mix of Sweedish, Greek and Serbo-Croatian(but I dont say it has anything to do with them, it SOUNDS only).
French- not a little bit- everybody knows how "r" sounds in French and compared with Latvian "r" - no way. It sounds a bit Hungary-but also not, because tipicaly hungary are ö, ü and they have no ž and many other africates.


----------



## neonrider

WannaBeMe said:


> To my ears it sounds like a mix of Sweedish, Greek and Serbo-Croatian(but I dont say it has anything to do with them, it SOUNDS only).
> French- not a little bit- everybody knows how "r" sounds in French and compared with Latvian "r" - no way. It sounds a bit Hungary-but also not, because tipicaly hungary are ö, ü and they have no ž and many other africates.



I don't think you understand the difference when I'm talking about Latvian and when I'm talking about Lithuanian language. Latvian and Lithuanian are related, but different languages. Both belong to a Baltic group. Some people confuse Latvia with Lithuania and vice versa, especially because both have "tv" sound (Litv- ; Latv-). So I wrote that Lithuanian (Litva) language sometimes (for some reason) is confused with French even if they are not alike, but because Lithuanian uses a lot of "zh" sounds and a lot of Lithuanian words are accented at the last letter. For example:

TU ESI TOLI = YOU ARE FAR AWAY
EINU ZHEME = I WALK ON SOIL

All these words have accent at the last letter and are pronounced briefly and very similar to French language.

Another example: French "I love" (J'aime) sounds 100% same as Lithuanian "Zheme" (zhaeme) which means "Earth". The vast difference between the two languages is the letter/sound "r" which has completely different pronunciation in these two languages (LT and FR), yet some foreigners or even French do not pronounce it always as French "r". To me it's also weird how come foreigners think that lithuanian language sounds sometimes like French, probably certain phrases only. To an untrained ear lithuanian at times may sound like French or like Greek, Spanish, Bulgarian, even Russian. A total moron may think it is German or Swedish or even Finnish. At some point in my life I told the Polish couple I was a Finn and they believed me 100%. Yet they were not morons, because I never spoke a word in my language with them. In same Poland folks approached me without any questions offered to buy Swedish Kroner currency from me in 1988. I told them in Polish I didn't have any... that way I avoided to be discovered as Litwin or Pan Radziecki (Sovietic), perhaps someone would have said - beat him up  In Poland often if you were a foreigner, they would leave you alone instead of beating you up on the street. It is popular in Poland or in Polish Lithuania to hit you with a shoulder when passing you by (always at least 2-3 guys, not one), then the fight begins, or you run. Most Lithuanians don't look Russian or Polish, they look more German or Swedish, or simply Lithuanian, so Poles think they are "real foreigners". I don't know how it is now, 20 years later, probably similar. I know that 60% Lithuanian "gene" are Ugro-Finn. I was reading about it somewhere and was surprised to discover that. So we could be half Punjabi, half Finns .

Do you have this "culture" in your country to hit a total stranger with a shoulder "accidentally" and then to start a fight? In Poland and to some degree in Lithuania that is very popular ("what are you staring at me like that"... punch!) between guys in a public transportation, in or near bars and right in the street. You have two options: fight back or run. Sometimes they got a knife or even a gun. It probably happens in any country. Yet where I grew up it was usually not done with a purpose of robbery, but only for fun. Sometimes and usually it was just fun and not so serious.


----------



## WannaBeMe

neonrider said:


> I don't think you understand the difference when I'm talking about Latvian and when I'm talking about Lithuanian language. Latvian and Lithuanian are related, but different languages. Both belong to a Baltic group. Some people confuse Latvia with Lithuania and vice versa, especially because both have "tv" sound (Litv- ; Latv-). So I wrote that Lithuanian (Litva) language sometimes (for some reason) is confused with French even if they are not alike, but because Lithuanian uses a lot of "zh" sounds and a lot of Lithuanian words are accented at the last letter. For example:
> 
> TU ESI TOLI = YOU ARE FAR AWAY
> EINU ZHEME = I WALK ON SOIL
> 
> All these words have accent at the last letter and are pronounced briefly and very similar to French language.
> 
> Another example: French "I love" (J'aime) sounds 100% same as Lithuanian "Zheme" (zhaeme) which means "Earth". The vast difference between the two languages is the letter/sound "r" which has completely different pronounciation in these two languages (LT and FR), yet some foreigners or even French do not pronounce it always as French "r". To me it's also weird how come foreigners think that lithuanian language sounds sometimes like French, probably certain phrases only. To an untrained ear lithuanian at times may sound like French or like Greek, Spanish, Bulgarian, even Russian. A total moron may think it is German or Swedish or even Finnish. At some point in my life I told the Polish couple I was a Finn and they believed me 100%. Yet they were not morons, because I never spoke a word in my language with them. In same Poland folks approached me without any questions offered to buy Swedish Kroner currency from me in 1988. I told them in Polish I didn't have any... that way I avoided to be discovered as Litwin, perhaps someone would have said beat him up  In Poland oftenif you were a foreigner they would leave you alone instead of beating you up on the street. It is popular in Poland or Polish Lithuania to hit you with a shoulder, then the fight begins. Most Lithuanians don't look Russian or Polish, they look more German or Swedish, or simply Lithuanian, so Poles think they are "real foreigners". I don't know how it is now, 20 years later, probably similar.
> 
> Do you have this "culture" in your country to hit a total stranger with a shoulder "accidentally" and then to start a fight? In Poland and to some degree in Lithuania that is very popular ("what are you staring at me like that"... punch!) between guys in a public transportation, in or near bars and right in the street. You have two options: fight back or run. Sometimes they got a knife or even a gun. It probably happens in any country. Yet where I grew up it was usually not done with a purpose of robbery, but only for fun. Sometimes and usually it was just fun and not so serious.


 
No I dont mix Latvian and Lithuanian up, I only think always that Latvia is down next to Poland and Lithuania over next to Estonia. And I was only talking that the language from the link doesnt sound French at all to my ears just like Lathuian doesnt.

I didnt know Lithuanians and Poles have conflictes. I thought you´ve got to have good rilationships since you two (Lithuaninans and Poles)have had a union in the past, right? 

My country is multi-culti by religion but everybody looks the same and they speak the same language. And everybody was a "brother" to other one till the war. Now some poeple just avoid each other and some live like before trying to be peacefull. We dont have many foreigners, mostly Chinese, but they stey there less than 3 years and go forward to EU. But still we dont even get any idea of doing such thing or provocing a fight. At least it was so 2 years ago untill I moved to Germany (but I dont think anything has changed for 2 years). Here in Germany it is more common since here live more people in gethos, Turkish, Albanian,Russian, whatever and some of them are provocing a fight even if you look them in the eyes.
But I dont think we should discus here about politics or cultur, its not allowed and its not the point.


----------



## karuna

When I visited Lithuania the first time with my friends, for me Lithuanian sounded very much like Russian. At that time my knowledge of Russian was almost non-existent, but my friends, who were better students of Russian, deflected that it sounded more like Polish than Russian  

Now I am curious to know how Serbian sounds like? Especially because of this pitch accent thing in another Slavic language. For Russians it is difficult to learn Latvian pitch accents and the associated distinction between short and long vowels. I blame this "inability" to inadequate teaching methods. 

From the discussion I noticed two interesting things: 1) only stress accented Russian vowels can be long, 2) only long Latvian syllables have what we call intonation. Maybe there is a connection between them – that the unpredictable stress accent in Russian and the pitch accent variations of long Latvian syllables has the same historic origin. Latvian tones in long syllables can even change in certain noun cases or verb conjugations similarly to stress changes in Russian. 

I don't know any linguist who has conjectured about this connection but then I also don't know many Latvian linguists who have described Latvian intonations as "pitch accent" which it certainly is albeit with a certain twist.


----------



## WannaBeMe

karuna said:


> When I visited Lithuania the first time with my friends, for me Lithuanian sounded very much like Russian. At that time my knowledge of Russian was almost non-existent, but my friends, who were better students of Russian, deflected that it sounded more like Polish than Russian
> 
> Now I am curious to know how Serbian sounds like? Especially because of this pitch accent thing in another Slavic language. For Russians it is difficult to learn Latvian pitch accents and the associated distinction between short and long vowels. I blame this "inability" to inadequate teaching methods.
> 
> From the discussion I noticed two interesting things: 1) only stress accented Russian vowels can be long, 2) only long Latvian syllables have what we call intonation. Maybe there is a connection between them – that the unpredictable stress accent in Russian and the pitch accent variations of long Latvian syllables has the same historic origin. Latvian tones in long syllables can even change in certain noun cases or verb conjugations similarly to stress changes in Russian.
> 
> I don't know any linguist who has conjectured about this connection but then I also don't know many Latvian linguists who have described Latvian intonations as "pitch accent" which it certainly is albeit with a certain twist.


 
In this thread you are able to heare all slavic languages.


----------



## CanItBe

What an interesting discussion! 
There are different varieties of Lithuanian language. They all sound different. I classify them that way (of course, other classifications equally possible):

Pure/standard delivery (Can be heard on good radio stations, theatre, in public announcements, to some extend business language)
Traditional regional accents (Aukštaiciu (R.Aukštaičiai, Dzūkai, Suvalkiečiai) , Žemaičių)
City accents (mainly Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda).
Youngster accents (they all love to play with language in the most disgusting way and there is nothing one can do )
Influenced accents (Lithuanians with huge influencies from other languages (mostly English))
Foreign accents (Those who live in Lithuania to whome Lithuanian is not first language (20%- mostly Polish, Russian))

I am of the opinion that standard Lithuanian or traditional regional accents are nothing like any Slavic language. But yes, people on the ground rarelly (really, wow, sounds so sililar though) speak that way. They want to be trendy and they go for city accents which sound to my ears very Russian indeed. Many short vowels became distracted where short i and u sidestep for long vowels. Pirmas [pirmas] becomes Pyrmas [pi:rmas], Teisingas Teisy[i:]ngas, Bokštas - Buokštas[Canadian more/before] or maybe Baokštas, Mėlynas MaAlinas. For those who want to feel that transition in English take this sentence as an example: "This is a nice building" -> Thees ees a nice beelding. Not as distictly as that but just to give you a hint. Thanks to long years of Russification and Soviet era. Insensibly the finer things that make sound Russian nice gradually applied to Lithuanian tongue especially in the cities.

My English language teacher was Russian. She was fluent in Lithuanian but when she spoke English she did it with the slight taste of Russian accent. I never heard Lithuanians speak English that way. They could do that but probably only if they have a good command of spoken Russian, which is quite rare in Lithuania.

Now phonetics. Both Russian and Lithuanian lacking pretty much the some sounds (phonetic symbols) as we compare them with English. Mainly both Th ,w,  -ng endings. You probaly will be suprised to know that in most Lithuanian regional accent r droppings or even voweling of l very common. Dabar -> daba(r), dar -> da(r), ir -> i(r), kodėl- > kodė(l), tegul - tegu(l) just like English feell ->fee(ll), mi(l)k. Even w exists vakaras just can be pronounced as wakaras and it be very natural in Su(w)valkija where I came from. Though Russian has some varieties of i([ee]) sounds which Lithuanians struggle to manage fluently.

Though Latvian is the closest language to Lithuanian, I do not understand a word when I hear it. When the group of fine young people sat near me at the coffe in Vilnius I mistook them for Slovaks or Czechs up until I happened to find out that they are Latvians. As far as Lithuanian sounding is concerned to me melodically the closest tongue will be Portuguese. I went through many posts here and it seems to me that I am not alone. That's really encouraging!


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## neonrider

I think when a Portuguese person is speaking English, he/she sounds like they are Russian. Portuguese accent is a bit like a Russian accent. Pure Lithuanian language does not sound like Russian at all, neither it is Slavic or even close, but the russified Lithuanian language using Russian swear- and curse- words and speaking with a slight Russian "accent" it may sound a bit like "Russian". Quite often people ask if I am Greek, because our surnames and names may almost match some Greek ones. Even the language is somehow Greek-sounding. I think Lithuanian language has sounds and words from every European language just proving that it is one of the oldest, almost a mother tongue of Europe.


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## neonrider

kusurija said:


> I personally, (according to my personal opinion & experience) can't agree with Mišo and Panda Nocta as to accent similarity Lithuanian - Russian. Personally to my ears there is great difference between these languages in accent and accent style.
> Yes, sometimes You can hear talking Lithuanian (language) with hard influence of Russian [or Polish - sometimes] accent (mostly from people, who are other nationality, but speaking Lithuanian or from these Lithuanians, which were under severe influence of Russian accent), but it doesn't mean, that this is the real sound of "native" Lithuanian language.
> 
> I'm not Lithuanian (but I'm quite familiar with this language), so I'm not speaking from position of native Lithuanian speaker, who could naturally feel strong difference with each other language. Neither am I Russian, but am partially familiar with Russian and I can hear Russian (cf. Russian accent) every day and I must speak (poor) Russian often. (I'm Czech).
> For my ears Lithuanian is by accent or accent style more similar to e.g. German or (either) Italian or Czech, then to Russian accent. Russian style of accent differs from lot of languages in Europe, I think.
> 
> As to vocabulary, no one of *living* languages are so similar to Lithuanian, as Latvian is. (Certainly, if we accept Samogithian as real language - not only as dialect of Lithuanian - in this case Samogithian is more similar)
> The similarities (vocabulary, grammar...) between Baltic and Slavis families of languages by my opinion are not so severe argument so we could say, that they are _significantly_ more relative then other pair of language families. This "more"  is only in some very little(+-neglectable) degree.
> 
> May I'm not right so far, these are only _my_ opinions.



I agree with Kusurija. As a native speaker, but living for a while in outer lands I can detect a slight and sometimes strong sovietisation / russification of Lithuanian language (depending on who's speaking and from where), yet it's not the way pre-WWII Lithuanians spoke. Pure Lithuanian without recent russification, such words as "blyatj" "nakhuj" etc. is nothing like Russian, although has several common words, just like any neighbouring language. Folks you have to put it on your wall that Lithuanian sounds as Lithuanian and liek any other language. It can remind you of something, but that's all. It can remind of Russian, Czech, Spanish, Italian, Iranian etc. yet if you listen closely with a trained ear after hearing many different languages you will think it's a mix of something yet an original language. Just like when you hear a countryside Chechen speaking Russian, do you automatically assume they are American? Just like Turkish can be very distinct, so is Lithuanian.


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## neonrider

sokol said:


> I do not speak a word Lithuanian but I know from hearing alone most Slavic languages to some degree (with active competence worth mentioning only in Slovenian).
> 
> And I've just done some hearing exercises in Lithuanian; click on the link given on German Wiki at the end of the document (Litauische Geschichten), there you can access some spoken texts. (I can't post the direct link for copyright reasons.)
> 
> To me these Lithuanian samples somehow _do _sound "Slavic", but not like any individual Slavic language I know from hearing. Phonetically I would put it somewhere in between Czech and Russian without being too close to any of these.
> (I even can recognise a very few words - which of course is due to common ancestry; Baltic and Slavic languages are not only Indoeuropean, they are also within the IE family related branches.)
> 
> So to me Lithuanian indeed has "a Slavic touch" when listening; hadn't I known that this is Lithuanian I probably would have thought at first that it were an exotic Slavic language like Sorbian (of which I know almost nothing and which I've never heard spoken out loud).
> When hearing to this text for a second or third time however I surely would have noticed that it couldn't be any Slavic languages as I only can recognise a very few words, and with Slavic languages I should be able to recognise many more.



I just listened to "AITVARAI" (the very first one there). The female is clearly an unprofessional speaker; she misspeaks while talking and she has a slight Russian accent to her voice and diction, as many Soviet Lithuanians do. She could even be a Russian born or raised in Vilnius or Klaipeda. Also the text has some borrowed words from neighbouring Slavic languages that are not used today, except by some old countryside people.


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## Garguya

Obviously those Latvian people in that campus DID not speak very much, right? Because otherwise You should have noticed how WEIRD that language is! 

In fact, no-ONE in Russia, nor Chezh Republic, nor Lithuania would be able to understand Latvian language. It has more similarities with German language. Latvia also has a huge historical background, connected with Germans.

Latvians and Russians (both live in Latvia) speaks with each other IN ENGLISH. Because they DO NOT understand each other`s languages. 

How can people say that Latvian sounds like Slavic? Latvian has these things like Ā,Ē,Ī,Ō,Ū... and IE, AI, EI, OI, AU. It is very `soft` language. It does not sound SLAVIC, because it is soft language.


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## Garguya

WannaBeMe said:


> To my ears it sounds like a mix of Sweedish, Greek and Serbo-Croatian(but I dont say it has anything to do with them, it SOUNDS only).
> French- not a little bit- everybody knows how "r" sounds in French and compared with Latvian "r" - no way. It sounds a bit Hungary-but also not, because tipicaly hungary are ö, ü and they have no ž and many other africates.



VERY INTERESTING WEBSITE! thanks for sharing. So this is HOW Latvian sounds exactly. Nothing Slavic at all. Not even close!

How about Lithuanian? Lithuanian is not like Latvian, right?


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## WannaBeMe

Garguya said:


> Obviously those Latvian people in that campus DID not speak very much, right? Because otherwise You should have noticed how WEIRD that language is!
> 
> In fact, no-ONE in Russia, nor Chezh Republic, nor Lithuania would be able to understand Latvian language. It has more similarities with German language. Latvia also has a huge historical background, connected with Germans.
> 
> Latvians and Russians (both live in Latvia) speaks with each other IN ENGLISH. Because they DO NOT understand each other`s languages.
> 
> How can people say that Latvian sounds like Slavic? Latvian has these things like Ā,Ē,Ī,Ō,Ū... and IE, AI, EI, OI, AU. It is very `soft` language. It does not sound SLAVIC, because it is soft language.


 
O plaese Garguya, I am tired of hearing it all the time from people who know nothing about Slavic languages. I havent got a clue of what you know about Slavs but it seems that you think that Russians are only Slavs. Very poor thinking.
So you think Slavic languages dont sound "soft" and German does? Lets suppose that your right, please show me this "more similar with German than to any Slavic language" I am very curious! 
Dont get me wrong, I dont say, you dont know it better than me , but I only want some proves, please.
It seems that Slavs and Balts are two most dissimilar groups ever. Even Japanese and Arabic is more similar to Baltics than Slavic languages.


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## astlanda

Well. I can speak some Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Swedish, German and Finnish.
I'm an Estonian, so I have heard those accents in my childhood, when I did not understand a word of them.
First I could not distinguish Latvian from Lithuanian until I noticed, that Lithuanians sound a bit closer to Russians.
I would never think that a Lithuanian is speaking Russian even if I can't hear it well (from distance etc.), but I have been mistaken several times thinking that some people are talking in Estonian, when they were Latvians.
Actually when a Latvian speaks Estonian I might think that he is a Finn and when a Lithuanian speaks Estonian his accent may sound Russian.

Anyway all the similarities you hear depend on your personal background. Don't get so emotional here.

About of German:
I mentioned, that Latvian shares some phonetic features with Estonian. And I have following personal experience with German:
Once in Prague an old German lady approached me asking, why she can't understand our guide. I was rather shocked and told her, that our guide is speaking Estonian. May be she thought, that a local guide spoke German with bad accent.
Both Latvians and Estonians have been ruled centuries by Germans. Russian influence was very scarce before the WWII . Our educated people wanted to be accepted into German community imitating their accent and habits. Estonian dialects sounded quite different, but they were erased by education. I believe, that almost the same happened in Latvia.


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## WannaBeMe

astlanda said:


> Well. I can speak some Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Swedish, German and Finnish.
> I'm an Estonian, so I have heard those accents in my childhood, when I did not understand a word of them.
> First I could not distinguish Latvian from Lithuanian until I noticed, that Lithuanians sound a bit closer to Russians.
> I would never think that a Lithuanian is speaking Russian even if I can't hear it well (from distance etc.), but I have been mistaken several times thinking that some people are talking in Estonian, when they were Latvians.
> Actually when a Latvian speaks Estonian I might think that he is a Finn and when a Lithuanian speaks Estonian his accent may sound Russian.
> 
> Anyway all the similarities you hear depend on your personal background. Don't get so emotional here.


 
Astlada, Ive just got to get angry when I heare such a nonsense that Gurgaya wrote that it sounds NOT EVEN CLOSE to Slavic. But all you peple now is Russian and Russian and even worse a bit of Polish that indeed sounds to me not so close to Serbo-Croatian as Lithuanian and since You could not distinguish Lithuanian from Latvian it got to be close to it and through analogy to SC too.
In my opinion Latvian sounds like Sweedish and Greek but there is the rub: Serbian sounds also like Sweedish and Greek but it has not this tipical Greek and Latvian endings with a lot of -OS and -AS but it has Greek pronounciation, Sweedish accent and tipical Slavic africates and "soft" consonants like č, ž, š , ć, đ, c, lj, nj. But please tell me, arent  these also at least basis quality characteristics of Latvian language! 
If not, then You and Gurgaya are comletely right and I wont be bothering you any more.


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## astlanda

WannaBeMe said:


> since You could not distinguish Lithuanian from Latvian it got to be close to it and through analogy to SC too.


I was really young then and they did sound simply "foreign" for me. By the way in my early childhood I could not make difference between Finnish and Estonian TV programs either.

I dare not to say anything about Serbo-Croatian, but I have never heard anything similar to Latvian ģ and ķ in any languages, what I have learned.

And if Polish does not sound Slavic enough, then we might end up this discussion here indeed.


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## WannaBeMe

astlanda said:


> I was really young then and they did sound simply "foreign" for me. By the way in my early childhood I could not make difference between Finnish and Estonian TV programs either.
> 
> I dare not to say anything about Serbo-Croatian, but I have never heard anything similar to Latvian ģ and ķ in any languages, what I have learned.
> 
> I dont realy know much about Latvian and Lithuanian, but I think the these are k and g with a bit of j in it. If it is so then Macedonian should have it. But I dont think any of Latvian sounds should make me biger troubles with pronouncing it or reading it. And I think accent should also be no problem.
> 
> And if Polish does not sound Slavic enough, then we might end up this discussion here indeed.


 
Well, there is no unique Slavic sounding, We all sounds simmilar but also very different. Polish does sounds Slavic but I can understand not a 5 % of what they say becouse their vowels are too short to my ears and when they are speeking fast, it seems to me like they dont have any vowels at all and they have to much africates and it sounds to me like "babže bubže czićedžyć-že and so on" and Russian I can understand a while if they speek clear and not so fast but still it sounds to my ears like a big mixture of very strong softness and very strong hardness. And south Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovenian sound more hard similar to Greek or Italian but they are still soft because of palatalisation. Especialy Serbo-Croatian (most in Bosnia) has very long vowels and 4 accent which can be 2 long and 2 short and both can be falling or rising.

If you want some example just to se how it looks like, here:

A long rising / 
a long falling \
A short rising /
a short falling \

bAba JE ovAko govOrila: kAd zagRmI od dOle posliE mnOgo sUšnIh dAna, svi se porEdaju očekujUći kIšu...ovamo, bože, ovamo bože, ljubim ti kaplju...

It sounds MELODIC, like singing without any glotal stop, and the pitch of the tone goes UP and DOWN and the vowels are LONG or SHORT.

I couldnt explain it better, sorry.


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## karuna

> I dont realy know much about Latvian and Lithuanian, but I think the these are k and g with a bit of j in it. If it is so then Macedonian should have it. But I dont think any of Latvian sounds should make me biger troubles with pronouncing it or reading it. And I think accent should also be no problem.



Actually ķ is closer to strongly palatalized Russian t and ģ respectively as palatalized d. If you know these palatalizations then it is easy to pronounce these sounds, just make it even more softer. Incidentally, the speakers of Easter Latvian dialects often have difficulty with ķ and ģ pronunciation.


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## astlanda

karuna said:


> Actually ķ is closer to strongly palatalized Russian t and ģ respectively as palatalized d. If you know these palatalizations then it is easy to pronounce these sounds, just make it even more softer. Incidentally, the speakers of Easter Latvian dialects often have difficulty with ķ and ģ pronunciation.



It is difficult for me.
For an ordinary Estonian "kaķu" sounds like "kattšu" and "Enģelis" has become an Estonian name "Endel" here.
So they are far from k & g indeed.

Karuna might explain us the principals of Latvian phonologic tones, but as much as I know, these don't relay on bare melody, but are related with dynamic loudness of sound. (The same in Lithuanian.)
Latvian has a so called "broken tone", which is a bit similar to Chinese third tone, but becomes very quiet in the middle of a vowel, so the vowel sounds almost like broken to 2 pieces.

Please correct me. I'm no expert.


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## karuna

The noticeable thing about Latvian intonations is that there is no accepted standard intonation. The folks in Vidzeme use all three (broken, sustained, falling), in West Latvia only sustained and slightly broken (broken and falling combined), and in Eastern Latvia only falling (sustained and falling combined) and broken intonation.

Speakers of these dialects tend to retain their dialectal intonations even when using the standard language. The mispronunciation of ķ and ģ would be immediately noticed but the tonal variations are mostly ignored as long as some as some distinction is made. I think that the Latvian tonal system is still undergoing changes at present.


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## edvinnn

Russianer said:


> Latvian is not similar to Russian:
> For example:
> 
> Black sea(in English)=
> =Melna jura(in Latvian)= Чёрное море(Сhornoe more)(in Russian)
> *****************************************
> I love you (in English)=
> =Es milu tevi (in Latvian)= Я тебя люблю(Ya tebya lyublyu)(in Russian)
> *****************************************************
> East (in English)=
> =Austrumi (in Latvian)= Восток(Vostok)(in Russian).
> ****************************************************
> yes (in English)= ja (in Latvian)= ja(in German)= да (da)(in Russian)
> ******************************************




And in Lithuanian:

Melyna jura - blue sea

As myliu tave - I love you

Rytai - east

jo, taip - yes


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## sennacherib

For me, they both sound similar to Russian or some other Slavic languages.


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## Alcuin

I know that there is a big debate about whether Baltic languages are a sub-category of Slavic languages.  In short, Russian linguists claim they are, while Baltic linguists claim they are not.  Since I don't know Russian (although I know Lithuanian pretty well), I can't really judge.  All I know is that both are synthetic languages.
Can anyone give me an educated opinion on this?  
Thanks.
PS.  If you know Germanic or Romance languages (English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguse, Romanian), you might use them for comparison purposes.


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## WannaBeMe

Alcuin said:


> I know that there is a big debate about whether Baltic languages are a sub-category of Slavic languages. In short, Russian linguists claim they are, while Baltic linguists claim they are not. Since I don't know Russian (although I know Lithuanian pretty well), I can't really judge. All I know is that both are synthetic languages.
> Can anyone give me an educated opinion on this?
> Thanks.
> PS. If you know Germanic or Romance languages (English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguse, Romanian), you might use them for comparison purposes.


 
Baltic lang. cannot be a sub-category of Slavic lang. at all since they are or sound more archaic and are a bit closer to Sankskrit then Slavic lang. but Baltic and Slavic lang. togather make a category of IE lang.

IE lang:

Indoarian ( Indian, Iranian);
Baltoslavic ( Baltic, Slavic);
Albanian;
Greece;
Germanic;
Celtic;
Roman etc. 
but the point is that Indoarian and Baltoslavic lang. have made one grade of dividing more than the others IE categories.


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## Orion7

astlanda said:


> I dare not to say anything about Serbo-Croatian, but I have never heard anything similar to Latvian ģ and ķ in any languages, what I have learned.


_Ģ_ [dj] and _ķ_ [tj] sounds are in Hungarian (_gy, ty_) and Czech/Slovak (_d', t'_). Similar sounds can be found in all other languages having d+y and t+y sound combinations, like Dutch _tj, dj_ ones. In English _ķ_-alike sound can be heard in _*t*uning_, _ģ_-alike in _*d*uring_.
Latvian _šķ_ and _žģ_ sound more like _šč_ (shtch), _ždž_ (zhdj).


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## Revans

Orion7 said:


> In English _ķ_-alike sound can be heard in _*t*uning_, _ģ_-alike in _*d*uring_. Latvian _šķ_ and _žģ_ sound more like _šč_ (shtch), _ždž_ (zhdj).


 
Those English examples really doesn't describe _ķ_ and _ģ_ sounds in Latvian. In Latvian they are pronounced much stronger, harder, but yeah something similar there is. 
And, no, _šķ_ in Latvian sounds exactly as it's written - it's _šķ_ (shtj)and is quite common; words - _šķēres, šķelt_. 
Sound _šč_ is extremely rare in Latvian and you can only find it in foreign words, like cities, surnames etc. For example, _Ščecina_ (Stettin - city in Poland), _Ščerbatihs_ (surname). 
Sounds _žģ_ and _ždž_ are not used in Latvian language.


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## astlanda

Orion7 said:


> Similar sounds can be found in all other languages having d+y and t+y sound combinations, like Dutch _tj, dj_ ones.


Depends on your concept of similarity.

 British and Estonian t are quite similar. However it makes your speech hardly ever understandable, if you try to speak Estonian with a strong British accent and poor grammar. (I have such a colleague.)


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## validation

Lithuanian language is similar to that of the ancient Hittites and also sanskrit (brought to India by the Aryans). It's one of the oldest Indo-European language that survived to these days (same goes to latvian but it's not as conservative as lithuanian).
If you tried listening to sanskrit and lithuanian they both sound quite similar at times. And both have some similar names for gods too.
I.e.: 
Tamsa (lith. for "darkness") in sanskrit would sound as "tamas";
Degti (lith. for "to burn") is sankr. "dehti";
Dievas (lith. for "god") in hindu, sanskrit is "deva";
Laima (lith. goddess of fate and luck) in sanskrit is Laxmi;*
*Ašvieniai (lith. the divine twins who pulled the chariot of the Sun) in sanskrit is Ashwins;
Žemyna (lith. goddess of the fruitlessness and soil) in sanskrit is Zamin... etc.
Some more:

Sanskrit: vŕk-as tiśthati
  Lithuanian: vilk-as stóvi 

(the word combination above means "the wolf is standing")

Sanskrit: vŕk-asya mātā
 Lithuanian: vilk-o mótina

(which means "wolf's mother")

Just type "The origin of lithuanian language" and click on the first result you get. The information there is boring but good.


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## rusita preciosa

Alcuin said:


> I know that there is a big debate about whether Baltic languages are a sub-category of Slavic languages. In short, Russian linguists claim they are, while Baltic linguists claim they are not.


That is absolutely not true.
Russian linguists (at least the main-stream ones) always classified Latvian and Lithuanian as a separate group, loosely connected to Germanic languages. May be there were some "rogue linguists"  that claimed these languages to be Slavic, but they would have little credibility.


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## Orion7

Revans said:


> Sounds _žģ_ and _ždž_ are not used in Latvian language.


It seems you do not know Latvian words _režģis_ (gen. _režģa_), _mežģīnes_, _Strazde_ (Pl.gen. _Straždžu_).


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## karuna

Orion7 said:


> It seems you do not know Latvian words _režģis_ (gen. _režģa_), _mežģīnes_



In these words ž and ģ belong to different syllables so both sounds will be quite articulated even in a casual speech.



> _Strazde_ (Pl.gen. _Straždžu_).



I am not sure if any speaker would use this genitive form. The genitive palatalization is often avoided especially in personal names. 

I can theoretically think of _Meždžūkstes_. Here ždž sounds very different from žģ in _mežģīnes_.

The pronunciation of _tuning _if written in Latvian alphabet is approximately _tjūnin'__. _Rather distinctive from _ķūnin' _that sounds more like an English word spoken with a strong Russian accent. It is easier to use a native Russian example directly. Russian palatalized t (ть) is very close to Latvian ķ.


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## Revans

Orion7 said:


> It seems you do not know Latvian words _režģis_ (gen. _režģa_), _mežģīnes_, _Strazde_ (Pl.gen. _Straždžu_).


 
Ouch, sorry, my bad. Really. Of course, I know those words and you are absolutely right - there's _žģ_ sound in Latvian (and quite common) and maybe some compound words with _ždž_ (Karuna gave an example). I guess I focused on finding those sounds at the beginning of the words. Sorry again for my incompetence.
In addition, I agree with Karuna that genitive palatization is used very rarely for person names and surnames. _Straždžu_ sounds really odd for me.

Thanks, Orion, for pointing out my mistake!


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## Alcuin

Laba diena.  Ar kazkas cia kalba lietuviskai?  Man atrodo kad dabar jauni lietuvai kalba ypac anglu kalba kaip antra kalba, kad nekalba rusiskai.  Ar tikrai?  Gal lietuvis gales man sakyti ar tikrai.  Aciu.


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## Slav

Alcuin said:


> I know that there is a big debate about whether Baltic languages are a sub-category of Slavic languages. In short, Russian linguists claim they are, while Baltic linguists claim they are not. Since I don't know Russian (although I know Lithuanian pretty well), I can't really judge. All I know is that both are synthetic languages.
> Can anyone give me an educated opinion on this?
> Thanks.
> PS. If you know Germanic or Romance languages (English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguse, Romanian), you might use them for comparison purposes.


 
Baltic and Slavic groups show a lot of commonalities. There are lot of analogous words, e.g. draugas - drug (_friend_), kada - kogda (_when_), vesti - vesti (_news_), sniegas - sneg (_snow_), grybas - grib (_mushroom_), etc. But none of the two groups is a sub-category of the other one, both are equal and self-dependent, the debates between those linguists don't make sense. That is true that both belong to synthetic languages. As for the sound, I think that Lithuanian, for example, does sound like Russian. To a person who speaks neither of the discussed languages they may even sound similar.


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## siuxa

Garguya said:


> How can people say that Latvian sounds like Slavic? Latvian has these things like Ā,Ē,Ī,Ō,Ū... and IE, AI, EI, OI, AU. It is very `soft` language. It does not sound SLAVIC, because it is soft language.



Latvian does not have "ō".  Latgalian does, however.


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## karuna

siuxa said:


> Latvian does not have "ō".  Latgalian does, however.



Although in Latvian ō is not used in spelling this sound is pronounced in many words.


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## ReGn

I speak Russian as my first language. Lithuanian is my second language at home now besides English. I started learning it actively about 2 years ago.

One thing I know for sure: syntax-wise it's almost identical to Russian. One can translate Lithuanian sentences into Russian directly without changing a lot of construction. There are differences, but the languages are very close indeed. It takes a Russian speaker way less effort and time to learn to speak fluent Latvian or Lithuanian than any other Indo-European language. I am not, of course, talking about the other Slavic languages.

I do believe that the two language groups (Baltic and Slavic) can be united in one Balto-Slavic group. There are a lot of commonalities that seem to be pretty ancient.


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## deine

Alcuin said:


> Laba diena. Ar kazkas cia kalba lietuviskai? Man atrodo kad dabar jauni lietuvai kalba ypac anglu kalba kaip antra kalba, kad nekalba rusiskai. Ar tikrai? Gal lietuvis gales man sakyti ar tikrai. Aciu.


Laba diena,
tikrai daugiau jaunų žmonių kalba anglų kalba ir mažai suptanta rusų kalbos. Taip jau susiklostė, kad kalbų mokymasis pakrypo į "vakarų pusę".
Aš asmeniškai taip pat labiau moku anglų, nei rusų kalbą, bet, manau, galėčiau kaip nors susišnekėti ir rusiškai.


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## neonrider

rusita preciosa said:


> That is absolutely not true.
> Russian linguists (at least the main-stream ones) always classified Latvian and Lithuanian as a separate group, loosely connected to Germanic languages. May be there were some "rogue linguists"  that claimed these languages to be Slavic, but they would have little credibility.



It puzzles me why Lithuanian and Latvian languages are placed into a Balto-Slavic group... They should be in a separate Baltic group. Otherwise why don't those "linguists" create Armeno-Slavic and Romano-Slavic, Franco-Slavic, even Japano-Slavic because of YA-YU-YO phenomenon, Hungary-Slavic etc. because those languages also have borrowed words from Slavic languages.

Here are basic ancient words from virtually Stone Age:

Lithuanian / Russian / English

Dangus / Nebo / Sky
Jura / More / Sea
Oras / Vozdukh / Air
Medis / Derevo / Tree
Gyvenimas / Zhizn' / Life
Zhmogus / Chelovek / Man
Maistas / Pish'chya / Food
Medzioti / Okhota / To hunt
Zhudyti / Ubit' / To kill
Skausmas / Bol' / Pain

See any similarities between them? I see similarity between Lithuanian "-ti" and Russian "t'" at the end of the noun. Also "-si" vs. "sya" (darosi, delayetsya).

Yet I see some similarities, for example:

Lithuanian / Russian

Grybas - Grib
Stiklas - Steklo
Stalas - Stol
Eiti - Idti
Kraujas - Krov'

Most of them are borrowed words or not similar enough to be in the same group.

Lithuanian - English

(none of the below are borrowed words either way)

Persekioti - Persecute
Bet - But
Ar - Or
*Vaik*scioti - Walk
Koset(i) - Cough
Jus - You
TILTAS (bridge), yet English "TILT" means "slope, slant" while old bridges are  usually sloped or tilted.
GRINDINYS (pavement) reminds of English GRIND  (ground) which looks like ground stones.
GRIEBT (to grip; to grab)
GRIEZT  (to grit)
GROTOS (grid)
PERKA, PIRKT (buys; to buy) = perk = to become  more interested (to buy?)
BITE (a bee)
ATTEMPT (English) and ATITEMPT (Lithuanian) which translates as "to drag in". 

Balto-Germanic? No. It should be Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian living languages). Slavic group should be a separate linguistic group.

Here are similarities between Lithuanian and Pacific languages...

Pacific / English / Lithuanian

Tauta = Song = Daina

Yet the word "Tauta" means "nation tribe" in Lithuanian. As we know most tribes in the world sing songs together. That's how a tribe / nation is kept together - through singing and dancing. Get the hint? Here's more: "UTA" in Japanese means "song". Coincidence? Perhaps. Or similarity between/among Pacific languages and Sanskrit. Yet it proves much more mysterious and much more long-term ties between distant languages than it was thought.

Now, if there is Balto-Slavic connection, say in the -TI / T' similarity phenomenon, then how about this: in Japanese YASASHII (pron: yasashiy) = "sweet" and in Russian it is SLADKII (pron. sladkiy). It becomex the "IY" similarity phonomenon and along with the YA-YU-YO phenomenon (and a few others not mentioned here) does it qualify to create a new, - Japano-Slavic group?

I'm not a linguist, I apologise if I confused some linguists, especially those who think if Balts and Slavs live nearby they must be sharing a common linguistic group, while maximum 3% of Baltic and Slavic words have a similarity mostly through borrowings. Here's one more: KOSHE (Lit.) = KASHA (Rus.) = "porridge" (no it's not KOSHER, or perhaps does KOSHER have a KASHA/KOSHE connection?)  Sorry for the messsy writing, I hope you got the idea...

Please provide grammatic similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages. I'm not a specialist in grammar.

I will try some:

Lit. Ash einu namo.
Rus. Ya iduu damoy.
(i am going home)
Parts sound similar because of "u" and "amo"

Lit. Eikime kartu
Rus. Poydyom vmyestye
(let's go together)

Lit. Jos shuo pastipo vakar.
Rus. Yeyo sobaka sdokhla vchera.
(her dog died yesterday)

Lit. Mes mokinomes gaminti maista.
Rus. My uchilis' gotovit' pishchyu.
(we were learning how to prepare food)

Similarities? In all three languages, yes. Any special, very close, similarity between the first two?

And of course, Balts and Slavs, as well as all other neighbours should live in Peace and harmony.


----------



## sokol

neonrider said:


> It puzzles me why Lithuanian and Latvian languages are placed into a Balto-Slavic group... They should be in a separate Baltic group. Otherwise why don't those "linguists" create Armeno-Slavic and Romano-Slavic, Franco-Slavic, even Japano-Slavic because of YA-YU-YO phenomenon, Hungary-Slavic etc. because those languages also have borrowed words from Slavic languages.



Oh but there _*is*_ a separate Baltic group - never has been disputed by linguists. 
On "first level", so to speak, there are separate groups of Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Romanic, Celtic, Greek, etc.

The "Balto-Slavic" group just is meant to indicate that Baltic and Slavic are closer to each other than to any other IE language - which we may consider already as a well-established fact and not just a theory. 

There are other theories for such groupings (on a "second level") which however (so far) aren't accepted by the majority of IE linguists, like the Italic-Celtic group, or Albanian-Illyrian, or Thracian-Phrygian: those still are regarded as hypothetical only; while others, like Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages have been grouped to even a "first level" group called Indo-Iranian.
Then there's of course the "highest level" of sub-grouping in IE, Satem-languages (Baltic, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, etc.) and Kentum-Languages (Germanic, Romance, Celtic, etc.).
But all those groupings do not mean that one of the basic, "first-level" groups were dependent on another one - they're just a categorisation system like the tree of life for plants and animals.

So there is no need to try and prove that Baltic languages are separate - we know they are.  Also rusita preciosa already made clear that Russian mainstream linguists too see it this way.


----------



## Awwal12

I must mention that according to Wikipedia, Russian and Belarusian languages got their reduction of vowels from Baltic languages, because of massive Baltic substrate (which was assimilated when linguistical ancestors of East Slavs moved northeastwards).

As for vocabulary - we must take into account the long coexistance of ancient Russians and West Balts in Kievan Russia and, later, in medieval Lithuania. Many initially Slavic words, theoretically, could be loaned by ancestors of Latvians and Lithuanians during this period. For example, all East Slavic languages (especially Russian and Ukrainian) have many words loaned from Turkic languages, including words of the very basic vocabulary (Rus. туман - a fog, кулак - a fist, хозяин - an owner). And as Baltic and Slavic languages are genetically close, it isn't easy to distinguish originally similar words from words loaned later.


----------



## WannaBeMe

neonrider said:


> It puzzles me why Lithuanian and Latvian languages are placed into a Balto-Slavic group... They should be in a separate Baltic group. Otherwise why don't those "linguists" create Armeno-Slavic and Romano-Slavic, Franco-Slavic, even Japano-Slavic because of YA-YU-YO phenomenon, Hungary-Slavic etc. because those languages also have borrowed words from Slavic languages.
> 
> Here are basic ancient words from virtually Stone Age:
> 
> Lithuanian / Russian / English
> 
> Dangus / Nebo / Sky
> Jura / More / Sea
> Oras / Vozdukh / Air
> Medis / Derevo / Tree
> Gyvenimas / Zhizn' / Life
> Zhmogus / Chelovek / Man
> Maistas / Pish'chya / Food
> Medzioti / Okhota / To hunt
> Zhudyti / Ubit' / To kill
> Skausmas / Bol' / Pain
> 
> See any similarities between them? I see similarity between Lithuanian "-ti" and Russian "t'" at the end of the noun. Also "-si" vs. "sya" (darosi, delayetsya).
> 
> Yet I see some similarities, for example:
> 
> Lithuanian / Russian
> 
> Grybas - Grib
> Stiklas - Steklo
> Stalas - Stol
> Eiti - Idti
> Kraujas - Krov'
> 
> Most of them are borrowed words or not similar enough to be in the same group.
> 
> Lithuanian - English
> 
> (none of the below are borrowed words either way)
> 
> Persekioti - Persecute
> Bet - But
> Ar - Or
> *Vaik*scioti - Walk
> Koset(i) - Cough
> Jus - You
> TILTAS (bridge), yet English "TILT" means "slope, slant" while old bridges are  usually sloped or tilted.
> GRINDINYS (pavement) reminds of English GRIND  (ground) which looks like ground stones.
> GRIEBT (to grip; to grab)
> GRIEZT  (to grit)
> GROTOS (grid)
> PERKA, PIRKT (buys; to buy) = perk = to become  more interested (to buy?)
> BITE (a bee)
> ATTEMPT (English) and ATITEMPT (Lithuanian) which translates as "to drag in".
> 
> Balto-Germanic? No. It should be Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian living languages). Slavic group should be a separate linguistic group.
> 
> Here are similarities between Lithuanian and Pacific languages...
> 
> Pacific / English / Lithuanian
> 
> Tauta = Song = Daina
> 
> Yet the word "Tauta" means "nation tribe" in Lithuanian. As we know most tribes in the world sing songs together. That's how a tribe / nation is kept together - through singing and dancing. Get the hint? Here's more: "UTA" in Japanese means "song". Coincidence? Perhaps. Or similarity between/among Pacific languages and Sanskrit. Yet it proves much more mysterious and much more long-term ties between distant languages than it was thought.
> 
> Now, if there is Balto-Slavic connection, say in the -TI / T' similarity phenomenon, then how about this: in Japanese YASASHII (pron: yasashiy) = "sweet" and in Russian it is SLADKII (pron. sladkiy). It becomex the "IY" similarity phonomenon and along with the YA-YU-YO phenomenon (and a few others not mentioned here) does it qualify to create a new, - Japano-Slavic group?
> 
> I'm not a linguist, I apologise if I confused some linguists, especially those who think if Balts and Slavs live nearby they must be sharing a common linguistic group, while maximum 3% of Baltic and Slavic words have a similarity mostly through borrowings. Here's one more: KOSHE (Lit.) = KASHA (Rus.) = "porridge" (no it's not KOSHER, or perhaps does KOSHER have a KASHA/KOSHE connection?)  Sorry for the messsy writing, I hope you got the idea...
> 
> Please provide grammatic similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages. I'm not a specialist in grammar.
> 
> I will try some:
> 
> Lit. Ash einu namo.
> Rus. Ya iduu damoy.
> (i am going home)
> Parts sound similar because of "u" and "amo"
> 
> Lit. Eikime kartu
> Rus. Poydyom vmyestye
> (let's go together)
> 
> Lit. Jos shuo pastipo vakar.
> Rus. Yeyo sobaka sdokhla vchera.
> (her dog died yesterday)
> 
> Lit. Mes mokinomes gaminti maista.
> Rus. My uchilis' gotovit' pishchyu.
> (we were learning how to prepare food)
> 
> Similarities? In all three languages, yes. Any special, very close, similarity between the first two?
> 
> And of course, Balts and Slavs, as well as all other neighbours should live in Peace and harmony.




For beeing able to understand the similarities you ought to know not only a slavic language and a baltic one but you ought to know many slavic languages including OldChurchslavonic, to know the structure of Sankskrit, to know Latin and Greek and possibly Gothic or Islandic. If you compare all of them with eachother you will assume very rapidly that slavic and baltic languages are very close to eachother and together close to Sankskrit. Also you will asume that slavic and baltic languages are much more conservative then any other langauge group specialy reguarding on morphology.
Baltic and Slavic languages make its own group for shure, they are not subjected to eachother but there in the time when Germanic or Greek or Celtic langueges have already had subgroubs the Preslavic and Prebaltic made one and the same group that's why we say Balto-Slavic. There is no need to feel subjected or without freedom or what I know what. Just be little more proffessional if you're a linguist and you will see the similarities.


----------



## neonrider

WannaBeMe and others who responded, I'm not a linguist, just an amateur observer, so I will not argue with professional linguists. Perhaps you are right, - the underlying structure of Baltic and Slavic languages could be closer, perhaps not the words, but the structure, the fundament. Both Baltic and Slavic group languages seem to be much more expressive and variety-word-rich than English or other languages. Yet I just posted my amateur observations, and I still think that connecting those two groups into a second level Balto-Slavic group makes less professional linguists and simple folks think that Slavic is just another Baltic language or vice versa. Some people posted that to them Lithuanian sounds like Russian very much. I don't think so. In fact when I travel in Europe, Russians always ask me whether I am French and Poles ask me whether I am Swedish, all the time. Yet Americans ask if I am either French or Russian or Ukrainian and only very intelligent ones tell me I am from a Baltic country. Perhaps the "accent" is similar when a "russified" Lithuanian speaks in a pseudo-Lithuanian language using half of his vocabulary as "ble-words" then he might sound very Russian to an unsuspecting foreigner. Don't get me wrong, we love Russian people, they (the friendly and highly cultured ones especially) are very dear to us and it is not about culture or history at all, it's plain linguistics.

Lithuanians, to my surprise, claim that Lithuanian is very close to Sanskrit, yet I only find a handful of similar words between them. Is Sanskrit also similar to Baltic and Slavic languages at it's core and at it's grammar?

Also, someone in Finland (quite looking down on Indo-Europeans indeed) claims that Finno-Ugric people were the first and original settlers in Europe. is this true? Did I-E people arrive to Europe much later after Finno-Ugrians? I thought Finno-Ugrians arrived to Europe from North-West Asia. In fact Eurasia is a one continent, there should not be a dividing line between the two, although racially the Euro-Asia boundary would be moved much further East somewhere beyond the core of India. I would include Americas into the original Asia Major as well.


----------



## Awwal12

> Lithuanians, to my surprise, claim that Lithuanian is very close to Sanskrit


Well, who doesn't do that nowadays?  It is a sort of national pride - to prove some "especial" similarities with Sanskrit. Stupid enough, to be honest.


> Also, someone in Finland (quite looking down on Indo-Europeans indeed) claims that Finno-Ugric people were the first and original settlers in Europe.


That's unscientific. Well, the Saami could be the most ancient population of Skandinavia, at least after the latest Ice Age, but all the Europe?.. I must also mention that although Saami language is surely Uralic, its initial belonging to Finno-Ugric language group is questionable.

P.S.:


> I thought Finno-Ugrians arrived to Europe from North-West Asia.


Well, they should get to the Norh-West Asia first, aren't they?  All we came from Africa after all, and other abstract reasonongs (taking into account a serious lack of info) are surely a work of devil.


----------



## WannaBeMe

neonrider said:


> WannaBeMe and others who responded, I'm not a linguist, just an amateur observer, so i will not argue with professional linguists. Perhaps you are right, - the underlying structure of Baltic and Slavic languages could be closer, perhaps not the words, but the structure, the fundament. Both Baltic and Slavic group languages seem to be much more expressive and variety-word-rich than English or other languages. Yet I just posted my amateur observations, and i still think that connecting those two groups into a second level Balto-Slavic group makes less professional linguists and simple folks think that Slavic is just another Baltic language or vice versa. Some people posted that to them Lithuanian sounds like Russian very much. I don't think so. In fact when I travel in Europe, Russians always ask me whether I am French and Poles ask me whether I am Swedish, all the time. Yet Americans ask if I am either French or Russian or Ukrainian and only very intelligent ones tell me I am from a Baltic country. Perhaps the "accent" is similar when a "russified" lithuanian speaks in a pseudo-lithuanian language using half of his vocabulary as "ble-words" then he might sound very Russian to an unsuspecting foreigner. Don't get me wrong, we love Russian people, they (the friendly and highly cultured ones especially) are very dear to us and it is not about culture or history at all, it's plain linguistics.
> 
> Lithuanians, to my surprise, claim that Lithuanian is very close to Sanskrit, yet I only find a handful of similar words between them. Is Sanskrit also similar to Baltic and Slavic languages at it's core and at it's grammar?
> 
> Also, someone in Finland (quite looking down on Indo-Europeans indeed) claims that Finno-Ugric people were the first and original settlers in Europe. is this true? Did I-E people arrive to Europe much later after Finno-Ugrians? I thought Finno-Ugrians arrived to Europe from  North-West Asia. In fact Eurasia is a one continent, there should not be a dividing line between the two, although racially the Euro-Asia boundary would be moved much further East somewhere beyond the core of India. I would include Americas into the original Asia Major as well.



I am happy to hear this Neonrider. You realy have to have a  sharp eye to be able to see this similiraties.
And indeed we can see that Slavic languages are getting closer and closer to Baltic languages going more and more in the past. Baltic languages are more conservative concidering sound changes and Slavic languages are more conservative concidering the grammar.

Balto-Slavic and Indo-Aryan might have formed some kind of continuum from the north-west to the south-east given that they share both satemization and the Ruki sound low. On the other hand genetic studies have shown that Slavs and North Indians share much larger amounts of the R1a haplogroup associated to the spread of Indo-European languages, than most germanic populations. The Balto-Slavic - Indo-Aryan link might thus be a result of a large part of common ancestry, between Eastern Europeans and Indo-Aryans.





​


----------



## astlanda

Awwal12 said:


> That's unscientific. Well, the Saami could be the most ancient population of Skandinavia, at least after the latest Ice Age, but all the Europe?.. I must also mention that although Saami language is *surely* Uralic, its initial belonging to Finno-Ugric language group is questionable.


I don't know anybody, who thinks that F-U people were the first settlers of Greece or Portugal. There are some, who believe, that it was spoken in Northern Europe as a substratum of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages. Yet there are linguists, who deny the existance of Uralic or even Finno-Ugric protolanguage, but it's very off topic here. You may search for Kalevi Wiik or Janos Pusztay about this matter. 
By the way - our German landlords tried to proof, that they were the aboriginal inhabitants of these lands not Estonians or Latvians, but that's a pure politics.
I was not there, when they came. So I'm not as sure as Awwal.


----------



## Awwal12

> There are some, who believe, that it was spoken in Northern Europe as a substratum of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages.


I believe, that the only contact between Finno-Ugric peoples and Germanians took place in Scandinavia (I wouldn't judge on the most ancient ages, of course). As for the Eastern Europe - looks like that were Finno-Ugors who moved westwards and assimilated Indoeuropean (probably Baltic) substrate, at least in the latest period. Very ancient Indoeuropean loanwords can be found even in the Komi lanuage (for example, "сизим" - seven; compare with Hungarian "het", Latvian "siptim", Latin "septem"), whereas there is no such Finnish loanwords in Indoeuropean languages. We must have in mind that the Komi folk originated a bit south-eastwards from its modern area, and moved north-westwards already in historical period; on the other hand, even their ancestors were on the northeasternmost edge of common Finno-Ugric area in Europe. Genotype of Erzya is rather "Baltic" than "Finno-Ugric" (the distribution of Y-haplogroups is almost identical to Belarusian one). Of course, their substrate could be not Baltic, but ancient Scythian, or even some more ancient Paleoindoeuropean; however, I don't see how it changes the situation, because, on the one hand, the Erzyan land is quite a remote (and so they probably weren't influenced by minor migrations), and on the other hand, the distribution of haplogroups there still isn't typical for the most of modern Finno-Ugric peoples; that is most likely a sign of assimilation of Indo-European substrate by Finnish-speaking people.
Of course, it is still probable that in pre-historical period there were multiple waves of Finno-Ugric and Indo-European mirations and conquests in different directions, leading to the general levelling of genotypes, nymerous contacts and mutual assimilations; but as for me, it seems slightly unscientific to discuss details of pre-historical migrations in Europe more ancient than 3 thousand years ago. Now we hardly can even bring into correlation archaeological cultures with linguistical groups in the Eastern Europe - bones and crocks cannot speak, and languages have no anthropology or haplogroups...


> I was not there, when they came. So I'm not as sure as Awwal.


Well, but belonging to some linguistical family is a matter of linguistical classification, not history.


----------



## astlanda

About F-U genes in the blood of Lithuanians you could go through the previous posts of this thread.
Moreover - the genetic arguments have very little value in linguistics. Think about the speakers of Russian and English. Estonians are racially closer to inhabitants of Sweden, Latvia and Skobaristan, but our language is closer to Finnish.
K. Week will find you a lot of F-U features in Northern Indoeuropean languages. 
There were late Neolithic cultures (Fatjanovo etc) in the North-Eastern Europe similar to Corded Ware or Battle-axe cultures of North-West, who *might* have been the ones, who brought Indoeuropean languages to this region and who may have been the source of the early Indoeuropean loanwords of Permic languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture



Awwal12 said:


> Well, but belonging to some linguistical family is a matter of linguistical classification, not history.


The problem is that there are several different classifications.

E.g. J. Puzstay believes, that Ugric, Mordvinic and Samoyedic languages were originally related to some Paleoasiatic aspect languages of North-Eastern Eurasia and joined the Uralic group later.

As I said, it's very off topic here. If you want to argue about these things, you should better start a new thread.


----------



## Koknesis

this is very interesting. btw we don't have word siptim, 7= septi_ņ_i


----------



## neonrider

Where is Skobaristan? 

Lithuanian version of "7" is "septyni" ("t" and "n" are soft).

Here's the entire count  one-to-twelve:

1 = vie'nas (vjenass) (Rus: adiin, adziin)
2 = du' (short "u") (Rus: dvaa)
3 - try's (triis, where "r" is soft) (Rus: trii)
4 - keturi' (kHTML clipboardäturi) (Rus: chHTML clipboardätyre)
5 - penki' (penki) (Rus: pHTML clipboardätj)
6 - sheshi' (shHTML clipboardäshi) (Rus: shehstj)
7 - septyni' (sHTML clipboardeptiini) (Rus: syemj)
8 - ashtuoni' (ashtwoni) (Rus: vwosyemj)
9 - devyni' (dHTML clipboardäviini) (Russian: dyevyatj)
10 - de'shimt (similar to Russian "de'syatj" but "e" pronounced more like HTML clipboardä
and some lithuanians write "ia" instead of "e"). (Rus: dyesHTML clipboardätj)

Regarding the above topic, some Belarusians are claiming that Lithuania is actually originally is Belarusian land and culture and call it Litvania, which is similar to as if Estonians would claim that Sweden is actually Estonian land and culture. I also noticed that Ukrainian has some Lithuanian words in it. I don't think those are Slavic words, yet I can't give examples now.

Also, regarding the "genes" I have read somewhere that Lithuanians have 60% similarity in genes with Finns. Don't ask me why. Also, "laivas" (ship) is "laiva" in Finnish eve if Lithuanians are not known for their maritime travels in the past. Other example ius "kirvis" (an axe) = "kirves" in Finnish.


----------



## Awwal12

2*astlanda*


> As I said, it's very off topic here. If you want to argue about these things, you should better start a new thread.


Here goes! 

2*Koknesis*, *neonrider*:
thanks for correction!


> I also noticed that Ukrainian has some Lithuanian words in it.


I don't know about it, but, theoretically, it is possible.


----------



## WannaBeMe

neonrider said:


> Where is Skobaristan?
> 
> Lithuanian version of "7" is "septyni" ("t" and "n" are soft).
> 
> Here's the entire count  one-to-twelve:
> 
> 1 = vie'nas (vjenass) (Rus: adiin, adziin)
> 2 = du' (short "u") (Rus: dvaa)
> 3 - try's (triis, where "r" is soft) (Rus: trii)
> 4 - keturi' (kHTML clipboardäturi) (Rus: chHTML clipboardätyre)
> 5 - penki' (penki) (Rus: pHTML clipboardätj)
> 6 - sheshi' (shHTML clipboardäshi) (Rus: shehstj)
> 7 - septyni' (sHTML clipboardeptiini) (Rus: syemj)
> 8 - ashtuoni' (ashtwoni) (Rus: vwosyemj)
> 9 - devyni' (dHTML clipboardäviini) (Russian: dyevyatj)
> 10 - de'shimt (similar to Russian "de'syatj" but "e" pronounced more like HTML clipboardä
> and some lithuanians write "ia" instead of "e"). (Rus: dyesHTML clipboardätj)
> 
> Regarding the above topic, some Belarusians are claiming that Lithuania is actually originally is Belarusian land and culture and call it Litvania, which is similar to as if Estonians would claim that Sweden is actually Estonian land and culture. I also noticed that Ukrainian has some Lithuanian words in it. I don't think those are Slavic words, yet I can't give examples now.
> 
> Also, regarding the "genes" I have read somewhere that Lithuanians have 60% similarity in genes with Finns. Don't ask me why. Also, "laivas" (ship) is "laiva" in Finnish eve if Lithuanians are not known for their maritime travels in the past. Other example ius "kirvis" (an axe) = "kirves" in Finnish.



It is very interesting that you compate it only to Russian.
Here are some other Slavic languages.

Serbocroatian and Oldchurchslavonic

1  jedan_____jedin
2  dva, dve___dva, dve
3  tri________tri
4  četiri______četire
5  pet_______pent
6  šest______šest
7  sedam____sedum
8  osam_____osum
9  devet_____devent
10 deset____desent

Read it just like Latvian or Lithuanian!


----------



## astlanda

neonrider said:


> Where is Skobaristan?
> 
> Regarding the above topic, some Belarusians are claiming that Lithuania is actually originally is Belarusian land and culture and call it Litvania ...
> 
> ... Also, "laivas" (ship) is "laiva" in Finnish eve if Lithuanians are not known for their maritime travels in the past. Other example ius "kirvis" (an axe) = "kirves" in Finnish.



"Laiva" is probably Finnic, but "kirves" has Baltic origin.

http://www.hot.ee/mutianpu/keeled/lithuanian/opetused/1sanad.html

Moreover: Lithuanian "miega+me" and Estonian "maga+me" (we sleep) share even the personal verbal ending "me". (Would be the same case with "-te".)

Kalevi Wiik and some others think that Proto-Finnic (the ancestor of Baltic-Finnic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic-Finnic_languages) was a Saami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Lappic_languages) dialect spoken by Baltic people who had shifted their language.

The mutual interference *may *have occurred at the time, when Cord (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture) and Comb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_Ceramic_culture) ceramic peoples lived side by side from Southern Finland to Northern Poland inhabiting different landskape. It *may *have been a kind of symbiosis like in some Himalaya regions, where the neighbouring nations trade with products of different altitude.

...

I've met Belorusians, who believe that they were originally a Baltic nation, who has changed their language to a Slavic one and I've met Lithuanian pagans, who make friends with those. They told that the official language of ancient Lithuanian state was a kind of old Belorusian, which was understandable both for Lithuanians and Poles. There are many myths of *Gediminas* Belarusian: Гедзімін as a devine hero among Belorusians, while for Lithuanians he was just a man.

Skobaristan is a region which lies eastwards from the "Finnic lake" or "Chudskoe ozero" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peipsi-Pihkva) i.e. the previous Pskov and Novgorod areas.

http://planeta.rambler.ru/community/skobaristan/


----------



## neonrider

astlanda said:


> "Laiva" is probably Finnic, but "kirves" has Baltic origin.
> 
> http://www.hot.ee/mutianpu/keeled/lithuanian/opetused/1sanad.html
> 
> Moreover: Lithuanian "miega+me" and Estonian "maga+me" (we sleep) share even the personal verbal ending "me". (Would be the same case with "-te".)
> 
> Kalevi Wiik and some others think that Proto-Finnic (the ancestor of Baltic-Finnic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic-Finnic_languages) was a Saami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Lappic_languages) dialect spoken by Baltic people who had shifted their language.
> 
> The mutual interference *may *have occurred at the time, when Cord (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture) and Comb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_Ceramic_culture) ceramic peoples lived side by side from Southern Finland to Northern Poland inhabiting different landskape. It *may *have been a kind of symbiosis like in some Himalaya regions, where the neighbouring nations trade with products of different altitude.
> 
> ...
> 
> I've met Belorusians, who believe that they were originally a Baltic nation, who has changed their language to a Slavic one and I've met Lithuanian pagans, who make friends with those. They told that the official language of ancient Lithuanian state was a kind of old Belorusian, which was understandable both for Lithuanians and Poles. There are many myths of *Gediminas* Belarusian: Гедзімін as a devine hero among Belorusians, while for Lithuanians he was just a man.
> 
> Skobaristan is a region which lies eastwards from the "Finnic lake" or "Chudskoe ozero" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peipsi-Pihkva) i.e. the previous Pskov and Novgorod areas.
> 
> http://planeta.rambler.ru/community/skobaristan/



Miegame/Magame is surprising, but someone told me recently that Lithuanians have more Finnic gene than do Estonians (how is that possible). He actually emailed me a linguistic illustration, which I can't find now.

Regarding -me in both EE/LT languages it means "mes" or "we" (eina + mes) (in Russian idi + om = idi + my; in Spanish va + mos), similar to English, so it could be borrowed by Estonians from IE?

Also, regarding -te you would guess it means "you" as in Serbian "ti" or Italian/Lithuanian "tu" but in Lithuanian country "te" means "take it" and in Japanese "te" mans "a hand". I know, it's a coincidence, it's probably because we all breath same air and share same water, but it's funny to play with languages even superficially.


----------



## neonrider

astlanda said:


> "Laiva" is probably Finnic, but "kirves" has Baltic origin.
> ...
> Skobaristan is a region which lies eastwards from the "Finnic lake" or "Chudskoe ozero" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peipsi-Pihkva) i.e. the previous Pskov and Novgorod areas.
> 
> http://planeta.rambler.ru/community/skobaristan/



I could not find where it explains the origin of the name "Skobari*stan*". Could you advise on that? Thanks.


----------



## astlanda

neonrider said:


> ... Lithuanians have more Finnic gene than do Estonians
> 
> Regarding -me ... it could be borrowed by Estonians from IE?




Well. There is some similar stuff in other Uralic and Altaic languages and even in Dravidan languages. http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1136950#post5877536

So I'm not certain about the borrowing. About Lithuanians having more Finnic genes than Estonians. Well. The main difference between Estonians and Finns is the matter, that after the Black Plague about 500 years ago Estonia got a big immigration wave from the south (from Latvia to Poland), which drastically changed our language, culture and probably the racial appearance. Still I doubt, if Lithuanians are closer to Finns, as our distinctive features are originated from you guys.

And I don't believe there are any Finnic genes. Look at Hungarians.

About Skobaristan - I've only heard a legend, that those guys from that region started to use certain hooks to fix poles of wooden houses. This kind of hook is called *skoba* in Russian. Hence they got a name *skobar' *building those houses all around Russia. And the rest ... You know all the other *stan*'s. Their land was called *Solnechnyi skobaristan* = The sunny hookland.

But be cautious using these words. Somebody might get angry while some others are proud of it.


----------



## Angelo di fuoco

And "stan" could even be a Slavic word in this context: there is a part of Moscow which is called Тёплый Стан (Tëplyi Stan), which is related to "стоять" ("to stand").


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## neonrider

I just found another word in English "augmentation" (growth) which in Russian means "rost" (POCT) or "prirost" and in Lithuanian it will be "augimas", but added growth will be "prie*aug*is" which uses "prie-" like in Russian "pri-" but the Lithuanian root "aug" is like English "aug". Then Lithuanian "augti" = Russian "rasti" (rosti), which both share the "-ti" but the root is different.


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## indiegrl

OldAvatar said:


> 1. Moldovan and Romanian are the same language.
> Despite the 15% of Slavic origin vocabulary, Romanian is a Romance language and it may "resemble" Italian or Portuguese, if you like, but not Russian.



 You really feel that Moldovan Romanian sounds like Portuguese and Italian?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv4Gdqcu5Z4


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## neonrider

indiegrl said:


> You really feel that Moldovan Romanian sounds like Portuguese and Italian?
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv4Gdqcu5Z4



Portuguese accent often sounds  like a Russian accent.


----------



## indiegrl

On topic: for me,roughly speaking, Lithuanian sounds a bit like Russian(although I cannot understand a word in Lithuanian),while Latvian sounds a bit like a combination of Bulgarian/Serbian + Finnish


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## neonrider

You have to listen how the true Lithuanian language sounds like - listen to people who left Lithuania in 1940s or before. All others, at least 50% have a Russian-sounding accent. Lithuanian language sounds like nothing else in Europe, it sounds exactly like Lithuanian. It is a unique language. It has no sound alikes. Or you could say that parts of it sound like every European language outthere. Lithuanian language has about 1% to 2% words similar to Russian, which is much less than Romanian does. P.S.: We love Russia, just commenting on facts.


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## indiegrl

neonrider said:


> You have to listen how the true Lithuanian language sounds like - listen to people who left Lithuania in 1940s or before. All others, at least 50% have a Russian-sounding accent. Lithuanian language sounds like nothing else in Europe, it sounds exactly like Lithuanian. It is a unique language. It has no sound alikes. Or you could say that parts of it sound like every European language outthere. Lithuanian language has about 1% to 2% words similar to Russian, which is much less than Romanian does. P.S.: We love Russia, just commenting on facts.



 I didn't know that,sorry. I noticed ,in fact,that Lithuanian has less in common with Russian than Romanian does,but Latvian seems to have more.
The fact that the sound of Lithuanian was influenced by Russian ( during the Soviet period ) seems plausible enough,because that's what happened to Romanian in Moldova during the Russian Empire and later during USSR.
 But how come languages like Estonian,Latvian or Armenian weren't influenced by Russian?


----------



## neonrider

indiegrl said:


> I didn't know that,sorry. I noticed ,in fact,that Lithuanian has less in common with Russian than Romanian does,but Latvian seems to have more.
> The fact that the sound of Lithuanian was influenced by Russian ( during the Soviet period ) seems plausible enough,because that's what happened to Romanian in Moldova during the Russian Empire and later during USSR.
> But how come languages like Estonian,Latvian or Armenian weren't influenced by Russian?



Because Lithuanians are more tolerant towards Russians, since only 6% of Lithuania's population was (still is?) Russian, so Lithuanians happily spoke Russian as a second language and got the accent so  much sooner than Estonians, who refused to speak any Russian. Also, Lithuanian language is much softer than Latvian or Estonian; it is more like Italian, Spanish, Latin or French or even Hungarian and certain Lithuanian words are pronounced even like in Arabic.


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## SpartanEmperor

Some words in Lithuanian sound like Serbo-Croatian.

Never
Lithuanian: Niekada
Serbo-Croatian: Nikada

Howitzer
Lithuanian: Haubica
Serbo-Croatian: Haubica

Head
Lithuanian: Galva
Serbo-Croatian: Glava

Probably Lithuanians move from Serbia and then pushed out by Serbs to Lithuania.


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## Söndag

SpartanEmperor said:


> Some words in Lithuanian sound like Serbo-Croatian.
> 
> Never
> Lithuanian: Niekada
> Serbo-Croatian: Nikada
> 
> Howitzer
> Lithuanian: *Haubica*
> Serbo-Croatian: Haubica
> 
> Head
> Lithuanian: Galva
> Serbo-Croatian: Glava
> 
> Probably Lithuanians move from Serbia and then pushed out by Serbs to Lithuania.


 
We don't have any word called (Haubica) !!! in Lithuanian
most of similar words from slavic Lithuanians get from Soviet occupation times...and if you will hear Lithuanian Samogitian you will not find any similaritys to slavic...even I will not understand there accent..


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## Söndag

I only find Latvian language simillar to Lithuanian ,but others no...neither with Russian,polish,serbian or any other....Russian writes in (Cyrillic) that has nothing to do with Lithuanian language...etc


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## Söndag

Europe map by languages


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## Ben Jamin

deine said:


> For me, Lithuanian language do not sound similar like Russian. Maybe this is because I am Lithuanian and for me my language do not sound similar to other language, except Latvian one.


 For a non Lithuanian speaker, but knowing Russian, Lithuanian really REMINDS of a very soft and sofisticated Russian. It does not sounds LIKE, of course. 
Germanic language speakers, however, will be rather unable to distinguish between these two languages. 
Before i settled in Norway I couldn't tell difference between Norwegian and Swedish, now I can hear who the speaker is after two words.


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## Ben Jamin

Russianer said:


> Latvian is not similar to Russian:
> For example:
> 
> Black sea(in English)=
> =Melna jura(in Latvian)= Чёрное море(Сhornoe more)(in Russian)
> *****************************************
> I love you (in English)=
> =Es milu tevi (in Latvian)= Я тебя люблю(Ya tebya lyublyu)(in Russian)
> *****************************************************
> East (in English)=
> =Austrumi (in Latvian)= Восток(Vostok)(in Russian).
> ****************************************************
> yes (in English)= ja (in Latvian)= ja(in German)= да (da)(in Russian)
> ******************************************


 Hey! The people telling about the similarity do not mean the words! They do not distinguish them at all! They only hear the melody.


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## Alcuin

yes, but I was referring to the sounds, not the vocabulary or the structures.  For example, I know that in Lithuanian there are two "l"s, as in Russian.  What I want to know is, if a Russian hears a Lithuanian speaking Lithuanian, can he identify it as Lithuanian?
Aciu (spasyba)
Alcuin


----------



## Ben Jamin

Alcuin said:


> yes, but I was referring to the sounds, not the vocabulary or the structures. For example, I know that in Lithuanian there are two "l"s, as in Russian. What I want to know is, if a Russian hears a Lithuanian speaking Lithuanian, can he identify it as Lithuanian?
> Aciu (spasyba)
> Alcuin


I am not Russian myself, but I think he would if he ever had heard the language before and he learned how it sounds..


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## Söndag

I had a conversation with few russians and I told them couple of lithuanian sentences and they told me that it's difficult and it's sound's totally diffrent from russian.


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## Ben Jamin

Söndag said:


> I had a conversation with few russians and I told them couple of lithuanian sentences and they told me that it's difficult and it's sound's totally diffrent from russian.


 I wouldn't expect anyhing else. Only a third language speaker, listening mainly to the melody of rapid speech would say that the languages sound similar. With SOUND meaning here melody, not words.


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## Söndag

I don't understand why those slavs want that Baltic languages would be so simmilar to slavic.Maybe slavs have some complex of their languages?.And by they way ,why russians who lives in Lithuania and Latvia all their life can't learn lithuanian and latvian languages?. Even younger russians hardly can learn to speak lithuanian or latvian  so if baltic languages would be so simmilar ,I think they would learn it very fast.And slavs who lives all their life in baltic if they learn lithuanian or latvian they still speak with russian accent.How many russians I know who lives near my home they can't speak lithuanian.


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## itreius

This thread is becoming ridiculous. No, wait, it already is ridiculous.
People who clearly have no knowledge about linguistics keep meddling with things they don't understand. Genetic relations of languages and language groups aren't determined based on 'how similar they sound to the layman'.
But then again, what can you expect from a thread named "do <x languages> sound similar to <y languages>?".


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## Ben Jamin

itreius said:


> This thread is becoming ridiculous. No, wait, it already is ridiculous.
> People who clearly have no knowledge about linguistics keep meddling with things they don't understand. Genetic relations of languages and language groups aren't determined based on 'how similar they sound to the layman'.
> But then again, what can you expect from a thread named "do <x languages> sounds similar to <y languages>?".


 Yes, there has been a lot of confusion here:
- nobody has defined what "sounds like" means
- many people gave their own interpretation og the aforesaid, without defining themselves what they mean
- many do not understand, that they should not confuse the way they perceive their own language with the way representatives of other languages do. They even get upset because of that.

I agree that the thread should be terminated.


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## Alcuin

This question is intended for native Russian speakers:  when you hear some speaking Lithuanian, can you identify it as Lithuanian?
If so, what sounds help you to identify it as such?


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## vianie

When I say, Lithuanian sounds like Russian and Latvian like Serbian, I mean by that nothing more and nothing less when an American speaker says Slovak sounds like Hungarian and Czech like German. That's just about a melody and "a tone position" of language.

And I love always, when someone consolides words "Slavs" or "slavic language" only with Russians.


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## phosphore

I am a native speaker of Serbian (which is a South Slavic language) I have just listened to a few videos of spoken Lithuanian on YouTube and to me Lithunian does sound very much like a Slavic language. The intonation, the consonant and vowel system are much like those of a Slavic language and I could easily identify spoken Lithuanian with Slovak (which I don't speak) for example, but not really with Russian which is rather specific even amongst Slavic languages.


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## astlanda

Does this sound Slavic, Baltic or Germanic?

"Vô_eš seunâ štoâra povêda ud_parvànjeg bôdulskog navÿga škrôzi unê zahôjne morâ tar_vèle kulàpi vaõn mejonvÿk."

http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Veyske_Povede


----------



## lingvistika

Latvian and Lithuanian are very different from Slavic languages. 

However, from my experience, Lithuanian language does *sound* quite Slavic when you don't pay much closer attention. The intonation and the flow is very much Slavic-like. 

Latvian, on the other hand, *sounds* a lot like Finnish from a distance, if you don't pay attention to details. It's very soft and almost singing-like. It makes sense too, in a way. Latvians have lived for centuries side by side with Southern Estonians with their more archaic Estonian, which in a way does resemble more Finnish than today's modern Estonian.


----------



## Alcuin

Please note that I am not putting all slavic languages in the same bag.  My question concerned Russian and Lithuanian, period.  It does concern of course the debate on baltic versus so-called balto-slavic languages.  Since Lithuanian is, like Russian, a synthetic language (as are all slavic languages), it shares some structural similarities with Russian.  Also, a few lexical similarities (knyga, persikas...).  So my question really concerns the phonetic similarities, that's all.  
Ok, see if any speaker of a slavic language can understand this:
Galbut galesite suprasti situs zodzius. (sorry, I don't have the Lithuanian accents here)  But this is of no help for the sounds.


----------



## Ben Jamin

Alcuin said:


> Please note that I am not putting all slavic languages in the same bag. My question concerned Russian and Lithuanian, period. It does concern of course the debate on baltic versus so-called balto-slavic languages. Since Lithuanian is, like Russian, a synthetic language (as are all slavic languages), it shares some structural similarities with Russian. Also, a few lexical similarities (knyga, persikas...). So my question really concerns the phonetic similarities, that's all.
> Ok, see if any speaker of a slavic language can understand this:
> Galbut galesite suprasti situs zodzius. (sorry, I don't have the Lithuanian accents here) But this is of no help for the sounds.


 
Sorry, but you mean perhaps diacritical signs, not accents. They are very important to distinguish between s and sh, z and zh, ts an ch sounds, and many more.

But back to your question. I am a native speaker of Polish, and fairly fluent speaker of Russian, and I do not understand a word in this sentence, except for a supposition that *galesite* is the 2nd person plural present tense of a verb (but maybe not). 

There are words in Lithuanian that are loan words from Slavic languages (mostly Russian and Polish), but I cannot see any of them here. There are many genetic cognates too (from PIE) but most of them are so different in form, that they are difficult to understand (mat' - motina, brat - brolis).

There are however phonetic similarities:
the abundance of sounds sh, zh, ch, j, (all Slavic languages)
syllables like aye, oye, uye, eye (especially east Slavic)
abundance of consonnants followed by ie, ia, io, iu (these become palatalized in many Slavic languages, I don't know about Lithuanian)
ending of many adjectives in shki, shkai in Lit. - versus ski, skiy, skiye in all Slavic languages (common with Germanic ish, isch)
variable stress position and pitch accent in Lithuanian remind especially of variable stress position and marked tone changes in Russian, and other East Slavic languages (the most of West and South Slavic being more "flat" in tone an having constant stress position).


----------



## astlanda

lingvistika said:


> Latvians have lived for centuries side by side with Southern Estonians with their more archaic Estonian, which in a way does resemble more Finnish than today's modern Estonian.



It's out of topic again, but the fact, that South-Estonian has preserved Finnic words, where STANDARD Estonian uses Low German loans, does not make it archaic. In fact it's very peculiar and much more advanced (shorter), than any other Baltic-Finnic language.
E.g. 
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Votian_imperfect_tense_negation#Other_Finnic_dialects_.5B10.5D

I'm no southener but a Vironian and our speech was almost Finnish in quite near past indeed.
http://www.eki.ee/murded/fonoteek/index.php?khk=Vai&leht=1&s=Kudru&r1=0

On another hand Latvian has been under stronger Finnic influence than Lithuanian for sure. As well as Estonian (and Livonian) is more Baltic than Finnish is.


----------



## karuna

Alcuin said:


> Galbut galesite suprasti situs zodzius.



As a native Latvian speaker at first I couldn't recognize the meaning even a single word but rereading it several times I am pretty sure that it means "Maybe you understand these words." Still can't analyze it grammatically but the rhythm and the similar sounding words has given me some idea.


----------



## Söndag

Off topic:*Lithuanian genetics:*
Since the Neolithic period the native inhabitants of the Lithuanian territory have not been replaced by any other ethnic group, so there is a high probability that the inhabitants of present day Lithuania have preserved the genetic composition of their forebears relatively undisturbed by the major demographic movements[51], although without being actually isolated from them.[52] The Lithuanian population appears to be relatively homogeneous, without apparent genetic differences among ethnic subgroups.[53]

A 2004 analysis of MtDNA in a Lithuanian population revealed that Lithuanians are close to (Indo-European) and Finno-Ugric-speaking populations of Northern and Eastern Europe. Y-chromosome SNP haplogroup analysis showed Lithuanians to be closest to Latvians,Estonians and Finnish people. .[54]

The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) further confirmed the absence of internal genetic structuring in the Lithuanian population. Comparisons with other European populations demonstrated that the Lithuanian mtDNA gene pool is more closely related to the mtDNA gene pool of Northern European populations, while molecular diversity indices (gene diversity 0.971 ± 0.008, nucleotide diversity 0.012 ± ± 0.007 and the mean number of pairwise differences between sequences 4.41 ± 2.19) indicate that the Lithuanians are among the more diverse populations in Europe.

Lithuanians and Latvians are closely related peoples of the Baltic Nations (including Estonia, populated by non-Indo European speaking Estonians), they have similar yet separate languages and cultural traditions.


----------



## Ben Jamin

Söndag said:


> Off topic:*Lithuanian genetics:*
> Since the Neolithic period the native inhabitants of the Lithuanian territory have not been replaced by any other ethnic group, so there is a high probability that the inhabitants of present day Lithuania have preserved the genetic composition of their forebears relatively undisturbed by the major demographic movements[51], although without being actually isolated from them.[52] The Lithuanian population appears to be relatively homogeneous, without apparent genetic differences among ethnic subgroups.[53]
> 
> A 2004 analysis of MtDNA in a Lithuanian population revealed that Lithuanians are close to (Indo-European) and Finno-Ugric-speaking populations of Northern and Eastern Europe. Y-chromosome SNP haplogroup analysis showed Lithuanians to be closest to Latvians,Estonians and Finnish people. .[54]
> 
> The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) further confirmed the absence of internal genetic structuring in the Lithuanian population. Comparisons with other European populations demonstrated that the Lithuanian mtDNA gene pool is more closely related to the mtDNA gene pool of Northern European populations, while molecular diversity indices (gene diversity 0.971 ± 0.008, nucleotide diversity 0.012 ± ± 0.007 and the mean number of pairwise differences between sequences 4.41 ± 2.19) indicate that the Lithuanians are among the more diverse populations in Europe.
> 
> Lithuanians and Latvians are closely related peoples of the Baltic Nations (including Estonia, populated by non-Indo European speaking Estonians), they have similar yet separate languages and cultural traditions.


 
This is interesting, but what this has to do with language? Languages do not follow genes.


----------



## neonrider

phosphore said:


> I am a native speaker of Serbian (which is a South Slavic language) I have just listened to a few videos of spoken Lithuanian on YouTube and to me Lithunian does sound very much like a Slavic language. The intonation, the consonant and vowel system are much like those of a Slavic language and I could easily identify spoken Lithuanian with Slovak (which I don't speak) for example, but not really with Russian which is rather specific even amongst Slavic languages.



Is Russian even a Slavic language? Well, it is, I suppose, an Eastern Slavic language, with a very specific pronounciation, a little bit similar to European Portuguese. 

There are two Lithuanian language versions - one is spoken by "russified" Homo Sovieticus, and a pure and true Lithuanian language that is spoken either by very old people, adult-emigrants, or by those who live in the countryside and those who care to clean up their speech. If you've heard the Homo Sovieticus speak, you will think they are Russian; otherwise you will know it is Lithuanian, unless an uneducated person has no idea where and what Lithuania is.

One Finn told me Lithuanian to him sounds like Bulgarian, yet he did not mean to say that Lithuanian has anything much in common with any other language. In fact, Lithuanian is a "mix" of most European languages, including Russian. It also depends who's speaking it and how.

Now try to imagine me speaking in a proper Lithuanian language:

Paklausyk zmogau kaip lietuviu kalba skamba tavo ausiai.

I don't think it sounds like anything else, just like Japanese does not sound like anything else, not even Italian. It's rather a stone age language that no one knows about...


----------



## neonrider

Try reading this:

PAPJAUSIME KIAULE, TURESIM MESOS VISUS METUS, VAIKAI NEBEBUS ALKANI IR KAIMYNAI NEBESIGEDYS PAS MUS UZEITI.

Pronounciation: Papiyausime kiaulae, tureisime meisos visus metus, vaikai nebebus alkani ir kaimynai nebesigeidys ppas mus uzheyti.

This is kind of a country (peasant) language. Try to see if it reminds of a Russian.


----------



## itreius

neonrider said:


> In fact, Lithuanian is a "mix" of most European languages


Please elaborate as to what you're trying to say.


----------



## Söndag

when never I told to my friends that there is a  discussion Thread: about Lithuanian & Latvian languages being slavic  ...they say to me it's nonsense...cuz they are not Slavic and dosn't sounds like Slavic.  and my self I don't understand why some of you think it's slavic...to me it dosn't sound slavic ...and if it be slavic..then don't you think that Lithuanians or Latvians would understand czech or polish language...and I don't understand them and dosn't see any simillaritys just few words which are from polish or Russian occupation period.


----------



## itreius

Söndag said:


> when never I told to my friends that there is a  discussion Thread: about Lithuanian & Latvian languages being slavic  ...they say to me it's nonsense...


Did you read the thread title? Nowhere does it ask "are lit. & lat. slavic languages?".



Söndag said:


> cuz they are not Slavic and dosn't sounds like Slavic.


Well, the thread title is articulated in such a way that it leads to confusion among many people, and for a good reason. The question shouldn't be whether they sound like Slavic languages but rather what phonetic similarities one can observe between Slavic and Baltic languages. (if we're to talk about what they "sound like")



Söndag said:


> and my self I don't understand why some of you think it's slavic


I don't think anyone said that they _are_ Slavic. They can _sound_ Slavic, and there are good reasons as to why someone would think they sound similar.



Söndag said:


> ...to me it dosn't sound slavic


Fine, how did you determine whether or not they sound similar?



Söndag said:


> ...and if it be slavic..then don't you think that Lithuanians or Latvians would understand czech or polish language


The question, again, isn't whether Latvian and Lithuanian are Slavic. They're not, however, even if they were, that wouldn't warrant mutual intelligibility.


----------



## neonrider

astlanda said:


> Does this sound Slavic, Baltic or Germanic?
> 
> "Vô_eš seunâ štoâra povêda ud_parvànjeg bôdulskog navÿga škrôzi unê zahôjne morâ tar_vèle kulàpi vaõn mejonvÿk."
> 
> http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Veyske_Povede



I notice a few words that look like they are Southern Slavic. Yet some words look more like Romanian, Albanian, Czech/Slovak and even Volapuk.  Yet when you look deeper into the sentence even with untrained eye you can notice it is some kind of isolated or ancient Slavic language. It could have some borrowed words from Italian, Hungarian etc. By the way, what does this word mean? => "parnêšt"

In Lithuanian "parnêšt(i)" means "to bring" "to carry over here".


----------



## neonrider

itreius said:


> Please elaborate as to what you're trying to say.



There are words in Lithuanian language that are old (not modern borrowings) that I recognise in other (Indo-)European languages, for example: Lenkija vs. Lengyel, or Saule vs. Soleil and Persekioti vs. Persecute and Sapnas vs. Sapna (ind.) and Stiklas vs. Steklo, then Kirvis vs. Kirves and Laivas vs. Laiva, Vanduo vs. Vand, etc.


----------



## neonrider

Lithuanian: prine'shti = to carry/bring closer
Russian: prinesi' = bring over here
Russian: prinesti' = to bring over

Lithuanian: ateisime = we will come over
Russian: otoidiom (ataidjom) = let's step aside
("at" and "m/e/y" both in the front and at the end of the word shows similarities between the two languages)

Lithuanian: pastate (pastaa'tei) = (they) built (it)
Russian: postroili (pastroyili) = (they) built (it)

Lithuanian: nustebusi = (she is) surprised
Russian: udivilas(i) (udivilasj') = (she became) surprised

Lithuanian: surasim(e) = we will find ("me(s)" = "we")
Russian: naidiom(y) = we will find ("my" = "we")

Lithuanian: suesime = we will eat that
Russian: sjedim = we will it that

This is one of the reasons Russian sounds like Lithuanian and vice versa.


----------



## itreius

neonrider said:


> There are words in Lithuanian language that are old (not modern borrowings) that I recognise in other (Indo-)European languages, for example: Lenkija vs. Lengyel, or Saule vs. Soleil and Persekioti vs. Persecute and Sapnas vs. Sapna (ind.) and Stiklas vs. Steklo, then Kirvis vs. Kirves and Laivas vs. Laiva, Vanduo vs. Vand, etc.


That doesn't make it a "mix of most European languages". It is wholly understandable that descendant languages have cognate words.


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## Ben Jamin

There seems to be a spectacular lack of communication between the three groups of participants in this thread: one that asks if Baltic languages sound similar to Slavic languages, specially Russian, another that answers that yes, they *sound similar to our ear*, and the third, consisting of native speakers of these languages that maintain: 'nope, noe similarity whatsoever', and give long lists of words that are different in Lithuanian and Russian. But nobody is maintaining that for example Lithuanian and Russian really *are* similar lexically! People just say that to a person being speaker of none of these two languages, and not having studied any of them, *listening* to them, will find that the two languages *sound* similar. We are speaking about pure sound similarity, without discerning the words, mostly catching similar sounds and intonation. The same way people say that Russian and Portuguese sound similar. Some say that Polish and Hungarian sound similar (beacuse of many sh, zh and ch sounds in both languages).
A Finnish friend of mine told me once when we listened to two Hungarians speaking 'It sounds much like Finnish, but I can't understand a word'.
Most Europeans listening to Japanese and Korean won't be able to distinguish these two languages from each other, which for native speakers of them will be a paramount ignorance, if not offence. This is however a *subjective* impression people get, even if there are maybe no two words really similar in those two languages.

There is no reason to argue against opinions, that nobody really maintains.


----------



## neonrider

Ben Jamin said:


> There seems to be a spectacular lack of communication between the three groups of participants in this thread: one that asks if Baltic languages sound similar to Slavic languages, specially Russian, another that answers that yes, they *sound similar to our ear*, and the third, consisting of native speakers of these languages that maintain: 'nope, noe similarity whatsoever', and give long lists of words that are different in Lithuanian and Russian. But nobody is maintaining that for example Lithuanian and Russian really *are* similar lexically! People just say that to a person being speaker of none of these two languages, and not having studied any of them, *listening* to them, will find that the two languages *sound* similar. We are speaking about pure sound similarity, without discerning the words, mostly catching similar sounds and intonation. The same way people say that Russian and Portuguese sound similar. Some say that Polish and Hungarian sound similar (beacuse of many sh, zh and ch sounds in both languages).
> A Finnish friend of mine told me once when we listened to two Hungarians speaking 'It sounds much like Finnish, but I can't understand a word'.
> Most Europeans listening to Japanese and Korean won't be able to distinguish these two languages from each other, which for native speakers of them will be a paramount ignorance, if not offence. This is however a *subjective* impression people get, even if there are maybe no two words really similar in those two languages.
> 
> There is no reason to argue against opinions, that nobody really maintains.



Have you read my last post? It explains a little bit in part why LT and RU languages are similar, although not a lot similar, but a little bit - yes, and I am Lithuanian and I find nothing wrong with Russian or Russians. To the cocks who deny it, they're just angry on Russians because of the past occupation and because Russians in Lithuania were considered second class citizens, yet Russians thought they were in charge.

*So, does the true Lithuanian language unaffected by Homo Sovieticus sound like a Russian? No, not much.* In fact when we speak in a foreign country in a correct Lithuanian language (without the so-called "russian accent" people usually ask whether we are French or Swedish, sometimes Czech  or even Finnish). Yet the former citizens of the ex-USSR sometimes recognises each other's face, no matter how much they want to hide it. 
*Does Lithuanian have grammatical and lexical similarities to Russian? Yes, in some way it does*, as I explained in my earlier post, sometimes a lot. I hope this closes this dispute.


----------



## Söndag

Ben Jamin said:


> There seems to be a spectacular lack of communication between the three groups of participants in this thread: one that asks if Baltic languages sound similar to Slavic languages, specially Russian, another that answers that yes, they *sound similar to our ear*, and the third, consisting of native speakers of these languages that maintain: 'nope, noe similarity whatsoever', and give long lists of words that are different in Lithuanian and Russian. But nobody is maintaining that for example Lithuanian and Russian really *are* similar lexically! People just say that to a person being speaker of none of these two languages, and not having studied any of them, *listening* to them, will find that the two languages *sound* similar. We are speaking about pure sound similarity, without discerning the words, mostly catching similar sounds and intonation. The same way people say that Russian and Portuguese sound similar. Some say that Polish and Hungarian sound similar (beacuse of many sh, zh and ch sounds in both languages).
> A Finnish friend of mine told me once when we listened to two Hungarians speaking 'It sounds much like Finnish, but I can't understand a word'.
> Most Europeans listening to Japanese and Korean won't be able to distinguish these two languages from each other, which for native speakers of them will be a paramount ignorance, if not offence. This is however a *subjective* impression people get, even if there are maybe no two words really similar in those two languages.
> 
> There is no reason to argue against opinions, that nobody really maintains.




Hungarian language sounds like finnish becouse it's (Finno-ugro) language...
I have watched old movie about (Darius and Girenas) and Lithuanian  language sounded to me more like Germanic then russian or any other slavic languages.
to me Russian language dosn't sound simillar to portugal...more like polish..
I believe that Lithuanian language can only sound simillar to ex-soviet countries....cuz when never some foreigners hear when I speak Lithuanian they ask me do I speak french or danish..or japanese..


----------



## itreius

Söndag said:


> and Lithuanian  language sounded to me more like Germanic


How did you determine what Lithuanian sounds like compared to "Germanic"? What method did you use?


----------



## Söndag

Lithuanian language is even much closer to Old prussian language then to Latvian.
Example:

ABIPUSSIS- abipusis-mutual

ABSURDS- absurdiškas

ABZÔLUTS- absoliutus-absolute

ADWENTS- adventas-advent

AGA-uoga-berry

AÎNS-vien-alone

AKIWÎSTAI-akivaizdžiai-apparently

Aks-akis-eye

AKIWÎSTS-akivaizdus-obvious 

AKTÔRISKAS-aktoriškas-dramatic

ALGA-alga-salary(pay)

ANKSTAI-anksti-early

ANTRA-antra-Second

ARELLIS-Erelis-Eagle

ARTUN-arti-close to something

As-Aš-Me

ASSARA-ašara-

ASTÔNDESIMTS-aštuonesdešimtas-eightieth 

ASTÔNEI-aštuoni-eight

BLUZNE-blužnis-spleen 

BRAÎDIS-Briedis-moose

there are meny simillar word: http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/Lie.pdf


----------



## Ben Jamin

neonrider said:


> *So, does the true Lithuanian language unaffected by Homo Sovieticus sound like a Russian? No, not much.*


 
I have only listened to Lithuanian official radio broadcasts (latest a couple of years ago) and to speeches of Lithuanian politicians on TV. Do they speak a "russianized" Lithuanian? I do not know. What I know is that the sound, for me, could be of another (not existing) Slavic, or closely related to Slavic language. 
We must not forget that Lithuania once ruled over  "Rus", and that the Old Belarussian language was until 1693 the official language of the Great Duchy. The populations, specially in the bordering regions mixed with each other. 

The quality of vowels and consonants is not far from the Slavic ones, and there are many sh, zh, ch sounds (for more see my earlier post). 
I am very familiar with the sound of Swedish and Finnish, and fairly familiar with Japanese, and I find the idea of those languages being similar to what I heard of Lithuanian quite strange. Swedish has however one feature common with Lithuanian: tonal accent, but this is outbalanced by a quite different quality of vowels and consonants, and a quite unique intonation.

No large Germanic language is similar in sound to either Slavic or Baltic languages. The only one that comes a little step in that direction is Icelandic. It is not so strongly stress timed as the other Germanic languages.

The best way to test the reaction of non native speakers to the mentioned languages is to submit links to recordings that give a sound example. Make one and place it on Youtube. 

And yes, I understand that people do not like their language compared to that of a nation they do not like of political reasons, but this is not the way to go on this forum.


----------



## Ben Jamin

Söndag said:


> Lithuanian language is even much closer to Old prussian language then to Latvian.
> Example:
> 
> ABIPUSSIS- abipusis-mutual
> 
> ABSURDS- absurdiškas
> 
> ABZÔLUTS- absoliutus-absolute
> 
> ADWENTS- adventas-advent
> 
> AGA-uoga-berry
> 
> AÎNS-vien-alone
> 
> AKIWÎSTAI-akivaizdžiai-apparently
> 
> Aks-akis-eye
> 
> AKIWÎSTS-akivaizdus-obvious
> 
> AKTÔRISKAS-aktoriškas-dramatic
> 
> ALGA-alga-salary(pay)
> 
> ANKSTAI-anksti-early
> 
> ANTRA-antra-Second
> 
> ARELLIS-Erelis-Eagle
> 
> ARTUN-arti-close to something
> 
> As-Aš-Me
> 
> ASSARA-ašara-
> 
> ASTÔNDESIMTS-aštuonesdešimtas-eightieth
> 
> ASTÔNEI-aštuoni-eight
> 
> BLUZNE-blužnis-spleen
> 
> BRAÎDIS-Briedis-moose
> 
> there are meny simillar word: http://donelaitis.vdu.lt/prussian/Lie.pdf


 You should not count words like absurd and absolute. They certainly did not exist in old Prussian, and theye are like in all European languages, coming from Latin.


----------



## Söndag

Ben Jamin said:


> You should not count words like absurd and absolute. They certainly did not exist in old Prussian, and theye are like in all European languages, coming from Latin.


I know,I just didn't had time for looking the whole book of prussian vocabulary ..I just posted few words I first found similar to Lithuanian...


----------



## Walden

As a Latvian speaker, I am in no position to judge whether the language I speak sounds like Slavic or not but... When I was at school, we used to go on excursions to Leningrad and Moscow. When the Russians heard us speaking Latvian among ourselves, the usual question was: "Are you from Germany?". In later years, when I was in Spain, in the same situation the Spanish asked us: "Are you from Russia?" The morale is that sound is something so indefinite, so intangible that it means different things to different people. To Estonians, for example, Portuguese sounds like Lithuanian, etc.


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## Elvus

Walden said:
			
		

> To Estonians, for example, Portuguese sounds like Lithuanian, etc


Lol! I've always been thinking that it's only my personal deviation. When I had heard Portuguese for the first time in a Portuguese TV channel for an instant I thought it was Lithuanian. It seems to me that both languages sound anyhow similar - even if that similarity is, in fact far. 

By the way, as for Lithuanian I've got some experience in listening to the language and I find interesting what you write here that the 'pure' Lithuanian sounds completely different than the speech spoken in contemporary Lithuania... That's true that in the first time spoken Lithuanian might sound similarly to Russian. I'd like to hear how sounds that 'pure' form of Lithuanian...


----------



## Revans

Ben Jamin said:


> The best way to test the reaction of non native speakers to the mentioned languages is to submit links to recordings that give a sound example. Make one and place it on Youtube.



Not exactly YouTube, but still...

http://www.pasakas.net/pasakas/latvi...un_lauku_pele/

There (in the web site) are a lot of Latvian (not only) tales (I'd say hundreds) spoken by native speakers - Latvians.
You can choose tales by clicking the letters at the top of the page, then click "play"! They are in alphabetical order. You can listen to the tale and follow the given text, too.


----------



## autobusas

deine said:


> Ones Estonian guy told me that Lithuanian language sounds similar to Portuguese. Interesting...


 
To me, Portuguese sounds like a Slavic language. Much more like a Slavic language than something similar to Spanish.
I guess the Estonian said it because of "ch" and "z" sounds we have in Lithuanian. They are used in Portuguese frequently, as far as I am concerned.

And in my opinion, Lithuanian doesn't sound like a Slavic language at all. But maybe it's because it's my mother tongue.
However, one Australian told me that it sounds Slavic. Also, a Brazilian said that it sounds like German, because it sounds orderly, whereas, for instance, French or Italian is very musical. A czech guy told me that Lithuanian sounds like Japanese. So I guess everyone hears the language differently 



Elvus said:


> By the way, as for Lithuanian I've got some experience in listening to the language and I find interesting what you write here that the 'pure' Lithuanian sounds completely different than the speech spoken in contemporary Lithuania... That's true that in the first time spoken Lithuanian might sound similarly to Russian. I'd like to hear how sounds that 'pure' form of Lithuanian...


 
I think that the reason why Lithuanian might sound like Russian is that young people swear a lot, in Russian, and they like to use other Russian words instead of saying "it's cool" or "I feel that.." in Lithuanian :/


----------



## neonrider

autobusas said:


> To me, Portuguese sounds like a Slavic language. Much more like a Slavic language than something similar to Spanish.
> I guess the Estonian said it because of "ch" and "z" sounds we have in Lithuanian. They are used in Portuguese frequently, as far as I am concerned.
> 
> And in my opinion, Lithuanian doesn't sound like a Slavic language at all. But maybe it's because it's my mother tongue.
> However, one Australian told me that it sounds Slavic. Also, a Brazilian said that it sounds like German, because it sounds orderly, whereas, for instance, French or Italian is very musical. A czech guy told me that Lithuanian sounds like Japanese. So I guess everyone hears the language differently
> 
> 
> 
> I think that the reason why Lithuanian might sound like Russian is that young people swear a lot, in Russian, and they like to use other Russian words instead of saying "it's cool" or "I feel that.." in Lithuanian :/




Believe it or not, but Lithuanian has similarities with Japanese language. For example:

JP/LT/EN

Kanda = kanda = biting/bites
Musi = muse = fly/bug
ikimas = ejimas = going

There are more very strange similarities between the two languages indeed. Japanese language has a lot of similarity with European languages in its structure and to a lesser degree to an Asian language.

Regarding Portuguese - it does sound like Russian, but only from a distance and only because the way Portuguese speak. Portuguese has not much in common with Russian otherwisse nor Lithuanian has. Also Lithuania and Russian has very little in common as well. The reason why Lithuanian may sound like Russian to some people, because those "listeners" are not intelligent or drunk or at best the "lithuanian" speakers are either Russian or have a have russified accent and is speaking using hard consonants and hard vowels, which I call "intimidatory language".


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## Ben Jamin

I think that this discussion has gone astray in relation to the question asked. In addition there are so many that break up open doors, and try to disprove things that nobody has claimed. Lithuanian is lexically undoubtedly a language quite different than all other languages, even Latvian. The degree of mutual intelligibility with the Slavic languages is so low, that it can be for practical purposes set to zero, at the same level as Greek. But the question was "does it sound like ...". Most of the respondents based their answers on subjective criteria, mostly undefined, "just a feeling", giving such fantastic answers as "like Japanese, Swedish, French, etc". Probably they were under a strong impression of just one phonetic feature, like the sound ž (common with French) or pitch accent (commom with Swedish). The truth is, that phonetically the Lithuanian language has most common features with the Slavic languages, that is the repertory of consonants, vowels, diphtongs, typical syllables is in such a degree common with the Slavic languages, that Lithuanian could easily phonetically be a Slavic language. And it does not help to deny the facts, even if one dislikes one's Slavic neighbours.


----------



## neonrider

Ben Jamin: the discussion is still going on and is evolving. The word "Žemė" (Earth, soil) in Lithuanian is pronounced very specifically and that pronounciation is at least 90% sound-alike as the French phrase "j'aime". This is just one example why some people "hear French" when Lithuanians speak. If you take away the recent Russian-sounding "accent" of some Lithuanians, the Lithuanian will not sound like Russian at all, it does not, but regarding to any Slavic language, it could be just about anything, especially keeping in mind that Czech,  Russian, Serbian and Polish sound completely different and could be mistaken for non-Slavic languages.

Weirdly enough, and not exactly on topic, and I don't always believe in coincidences, but I just found the word "Jo" (Hu: good) and "Yo(i)" (Jp: good), similar. Same as Japanese may belong outside of Asia somehow (because to me it just does not read or sound like a typical East Asian language, but has a rather European structure and words, except the Kanjikana writing system), Lithuanian could belong elsewhere as well, most likely as Europes truly the oldest living language, so old that it even has common words with Pacific East Asian languages, but not old enough to have common words with African languages. As if the "7" has lost it's tail.

As I mentioned many times in my posts, there is no "hatred" towards anyone (except some government and politicians), it does not exist, it's just an illusion by those who EXPECT it. Same illusion as if Lithuanian sounded like something else, yet it is itself and nothing else. Just like a Japanese is a language on it's own. It's just no one wants "undeservedly" to be grouped with another great culture, as opposed to remain original.

Czesc!


----------



## Ben Jamin

neonrider said:


> Ben Jamin: the discussion is still going on and is evolving.
> 
> As I mentioned many times in my posts, there is no "hatred" towards anyone (except some government and politicians), it does not exist, it's just an illusion by those who EXPECT it. Same illusion as if Lithuanian sounded like something else, yet it is itself and nothing else. Just like a Japanese is a language on it's own. It's just no one wants "undeservedly" to be grouped with another great culture, as opposed to remain original.
> 
> Czesc!


 I did not write about hatred, I used the word 'dislike'. A dislike can be suspected from the intensity of the protests of some Lithuanian foreros against the *phonetical* similarity between Slavic languages and Lithuanian.
Once again I will repeat: people suggest phonetical similarity and your compatriots try to prove that there is no lexical similarity. This becomes a meaningless discussion. 
I ask: show me which sounds in Lithuanian do not exist in one or another Slavic language. If there are any, then what percent of all the speech do they make?


----------



## neonrider

Hatred and dislike are pretty close to each other, sometimes identical and both can vary to a certain degree. A lot of dislike can be worse than some hatred ;-). Phonetically we have a lot in common. The letter/sound than none of the Slavs (wszyscy Slowianie) have is "Ėė". Also a vowel digraph "au" which repeats a lot in Lithuanian language, which some people mistake for a sound "o" (as in eau de cologne) although I think Russian languages replaces "u" with "l" = "-al". Bėgau vs. bezhal. The following leters also are absent in Slavic languages, or they are used for different sounds: Ąą, Ee, Ęę, Įį, Ųų. The Lithuanian "Ee" is pronounced more like Ää. Also, in Lithuanian language a hard "i" is missing as well. "Y" is pronounced with front f the mouth like in Czech or in English. Lithuanian has characteristics from Slavic and other languages as well as it's just an original language. The only difference that we are not God's Chosen people like some claim to be, and we have great neighbours to be proud of and friendly with. I especially like Poland, where I feel like at home, yet its different. Which makes it a great destination. So this thread has proven that Baltic languages do indeed have common points with Slavic languages as well. I believe there is no meaningless discussion once someone has something to say, then it develops into an understanding, which replaces the illusions, and at some point it may educate the "foreros" (including myself) that they are indeed closer to Slavic nations than they thought they were. Yet take a  look at Slovenes and then at Russians - those two languages are quite close, yet the cultural differences between the two are as if they almost were not Slavic brothers. Yet phonetically and somehow grammatically we are proud to be of some similarity to our proud Slavic neighbours. It's same as with Death - first comes confusion, anger and denial, then - acceptance 

Trzymaj sie.


----------



## Ben Jamin

neonrider said:


> Hatred and dislike are pretty close to each other, sometimes identical and both can vary to a certain degree. A lot of dislike can be worse than some hatred ;-). Phonetically we have a lot in common. The letter/sound than none of the Slavs (wszyscy Slowianie) have is "Ėė". Also a vowel digraph "au" which repeats a lot in Lithuanian language, which some people mistake for a sound "o" (as in eau de cologne) although I think Russian languages replaces "u" with "l" = "-al". Bėgau vs. bezhal. The following leters also are absent in Slavic languages, or they are used for different sounds: Ąą, Ee, Ęę, Įį, Ųų. The Lithuanian "Ee" is pronounced more like Ää. Also, in Lithuanian language a hard "i" is missing as well. "Y" is pronounced with front f the mouth like in Czech or in English. Lithuanian has characteristics from Slavic and other languages as well as it's just an original language. The only difference that we are not God's Chosen people like some claim to be, and we have great neighbours to be proud of and friendly with. I especially like Poland, where I feel like at home, yet its different. Which makes it a great destination. So this thread has proven that Baltic languages do indeed have common points with Slavic languages as well. I believe there is no meaningless discussion once someone has something to say, then it develops into an understanding, which replaces the illusions, and at some point it may educate the "foreros" (including myself) that they are indeed closer to Slavic nations than they thought they were. Yet take a look at Slovenes and then at Russians - those two languages are quite close, yet the cultural differences between the two are as if they almost were not Slavic brothers. Yet phonetically and somehow grammatically we are proud to be of some similarity to our proud Slavic neighbours. It's same as with Death - first comes confusion, anger and denial, then - acceptance
> 
> Trzymaj sie.


 Thank you for your examples. They confirm what I wrote: there are small phonetical differences between Lithuanian and Slavic languages, and they sound alike enough that a person not knowing Lithuanian nor any Slavic language would have a problem telling which is which.
I can also tell you that Poles are generally very positive towards Lithuania and its people. In Poland there are many people of Lithuanian origin and they are proud of it, including the new president elect


----------



## mugibil

Just some notes again -


> I've known that language as Srpsko-Hrvatski (Serbo-Croatian) which I can speak somehow, and not Croato-Serbian.


"Croato-Serbian" used to be an alternative name of Serbo-Croatian. I used it to avoid any modern political implications.


> First of all it's hard to understand what (ubiquitous) palatalization and velarization is unless I can hear an example.


You can look it up on wikipedia. Palatalization ("softness"/"slenderness") is how a consonant in "ne" can change, so the whole thing can seem like a "nye" to a foreigner; and a "ni" can be like a "nyi". Velarization ("hardness"/"broadness") is sort of the opposite - the consonant becomes somewhat throaty/guttural/dark. I don't know if Lithuanian is supposed to have velarization, but I've certainly read about palatalization in descriptions of it. That doesn't, in itself, make Lithuanian more like Russian than like Irish; indeed I'm positive that Irish (Goidelic Celtic) is more closely similar to Russian (East Slavic) in this respect than Lithuanian is.


> So if you think that Lithuanian sounds like Russian/Slavic - you may hear an illusion of your imagination, because you may want it to sound that way or you may think about the geographic proximity of Lithuania to Slavic countries


Well, Latvia is close too, but I specifically said Latvian didn't sound like Russian at all to me. But of course you're right that I can be subconsciously influenced by what I know about the geography, or by what I've got from the linguistic literature for that matter. And when I listen to a language I don't know, I can be influenced by the languages that I do know in how I interpret what I hear: I may hear a Lithuanian <ie> diphthong as a typical Russian <e> with preceding palatalization, when they're actually different phenomena (same with <uo>/<o>). But in some cases I'm sure it isn't a diphthong (because I can see the spelling). Also, the fact that you can dismiss any of your fellow-Lithuanians as speaking "Russian-corrupted" Lithuanian doesn't make it easier for other people to say what it sounds like - as in the "No true Scotsman" joke (google it). Anyway, I wish you all the best!


----------



## neonrider

mungu said:


> Just some notes again -
> 
> "Croato-Serbian" used to be an alternative name of Serbo-Croatian. I used it to avoid any modern political implications.
> 
> *I understood, you used alphabetic order - S follows a C/K/H/X.*
> 
> You can look it up on wikipedia. Palatalization ("softness"/"slenderness") is how a consonant in "ne" can change, so the whole thing can seem like a "nye" to a foreigner; and a "ni" can be like a "nyi".
> 
> *Lithuanian "ne" is more like "nää" and "nä" (not "nyaa" though) depending on who is saying it. Sometimes like "nea". Palatalisation also exists in Latin/Romance languages as well as many others.*
> 
> Velarization ("hardness"/"broadness") is sort of the opposite - the consonant becomes somewhat throaty/guttural/dark.
> 
> *Like a Russian "bI" and "E-oborotnoe/reversed?*
> 
> I don't know if Lithuanian is supposed to have velarization, but I've certainly read about palatalization in descriptions of it.
> 
> *Velarization does not exist in Lithuanian, except some old folk language or some songs. Latvian does have some velarisation.
> *
> That doesn't, in itself, make Lithuanian more like Russian than like Irish; indeed I'm positive that Irish (Goidelic Celtic) is more closely similar to Russian (East Slavic) in this respect than Lithuanian is.
> 
> *Wow, that is something NEW, can you tell me more facts and examples of Gaelic? Goidelic? Irish and Russian in comparison?*
> 
> Well, Latvia is close too, but I specifically said Latvian didn't sound like Russian at all to me. But of course you're right that I can be subconsciously influenced by what I know about the geography, or by what I've got from the linguistic literature for that matter. And when I listen to a language I don't know, I can be influenced by the languages that I do know in how I interpret what I hear: I may hear a Lithuanian <ie> diphthong as a typical Russian <e> with preceding palatalization, when they're actually different phenomena (same with <uo>/<o>).
> 
> *Lithuanian "uo" is pronounced more like "wo" with a short "u" and quite a short "o". Russian "o" is sometimes pronounced as "uo" but a different-sounding one.*
> 
> *Lith. "ie" - I'm not sure, there are some minor differences. I think Russian "e" is more like "je" (ye) and Lithuanian is more like "i-e" which takes longer to say it. Also Lithuanian "ie" involves "i" and "ä" sounds, so it sounds more like "iää" and it usually or sometimes sounds like "piaava" and not "pieva" (a meadow). "The "i" is well pronounced. This is why I propose for Lith. lang. to begin using umlaut letters, such as ä, etc. I guess using "e" is simplier.*
> 
> But in some cases I'm sure it isn't a diphthong (because I can see the spelling). Also, the fact that you can dismiss any of your fellow-Lithuanians as speaking "Russian-corrupted" Lithuanian doesn't make it easier for other people to say what it sounds like - as in the "No true Scotsman" joke (google it). Anyway, I wish you all the best!



Cheers ;-)


----------



## Koknesis

validation said:


> Lithuanian language is similar to that of the ancient Hittites and also sanskrit (brought to India by the Aryans). It's one of the oldest Indo-European language that survived to these days (same goes to latvian but it's not as conservative as lithuanian).
> If you tried listening to sanskrit and lithuanian they both sound quite similar at times. And both have some similar names for gods too.
> I.e.:
> Tamsa (lith. for "darkness") in sanskrit would sound as "tamas";
> Degti (lith. for "to burn") is sankr. "dehti";
> Dievas (lith. for "god") in hindu, sanskrit is "deva";
> Laima (lith. goddess of fate and luck) in sanskrit is Laxmi;Ašvieniai (lith. the divine twins who pulled the chariot of the Sun) in sanskrit is Ashwins;
> Žemyna (lith. goddess of the fruitlessness and soil) in sanskrit is Zamin... etc.
> Some more:
> 
> Sanskrit: vŕk-as tiśthati
> Lithuanian: vilk-as stóvi
> 
> (the word combination above means "the wolf is standing")
> 
> Sanskrit: vŕk-asya mātā
> Lithuanian: vilk-o mótina
> 
> (which means "wolf's mother")
> 
> Just type "The origin of lithuanian language" and click on the first result you get. The information there is boring but good.



  I don't think it makes latvian language somehow ''younger'' as you see:
Tamsa (lith. for "darkness") in sanskrit would sound as "tamas" in latvian it would be tumsa
Degti (lith. for "to burn") is sankr. "dehti";, in latvian it would be degt
Dievas (lith. for "god") in hindu, sanskrit is "deva"; latvian Dievs
Laima (lith. goddess of fate and luck) in sanskrit is Laxmi; latvian Laima
Ašvieniai (lith. the divine twins who pulled the chariot of the Sun) in sanskrit is Ashwins; latvian Ūsiņš
Žemyna (lith. goddess of the fruitlessness and soil) in sanskrit is Zamin... etc.; like latvian word zeme

Sanskrit: vŕk-as tiśthati
  Lithuanian: vilk-as stóvi 
Latvian: vilks stāv 

Sanskrit: vŕk-asya mātā
 Lithuanian: vilk-o mótina
Latvian:vilka māte


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## Demian81

WannaBeMe said:


> No I dont mix Latvian and Lithuanian up, I only think always that Latvia is down next to Poland and Lithuania over next to Estonia. And I was only talking that the language from the link doesnt sound French at all to my ears just like Lathuian doesnt.
> 
> I didnt know Lithuanians and Poles have conflictes. I thought you´ve got to have good rilationships since you two (Lithuaninans and Poles)have had a union in the past, right?
> 
> My country is multi-culti by religion but everybody looks the same and they speak the same language. And everybody was a "brother" to other one till the war. Now some poeple just avoid each other and some live like before trying to be peacefull. We dont have many foreigners, mostly Chinese, but they stey there less than 3 years and go forward to EU. But still we dont even get any idea of doing such thing or provocing a fight. At least it was so 2 years ago untill I moved to Germany (but I dont think anything has changed for 2 years). Here in Germany it is more common since here live more people in gethos, Turkish, Albanian,Russian, whatever and some of them are provocing a fight even if you look them in the eyes.
> But I dont think we should discus here about politics or cultur, its not allowed and its not the point.


 
Just listen to you: "Latvia is down next to Poland and Lithuania over next to Estonia". I must say you really do confuse the two countries!!!

And I just happened to listen to some Serbian speach here at work (we have a new colleague, who comes from Serbia) - the language sounds very Russian and nothing to do with Latvian at all. And I really mean it - nothing to do at all. And even the Serbian guy says that Latvian doesn't sound like Serbian or Russian to him at all, but rather like Swedish/German/Finnish.
And it is also the first time in my 30 years of age that someone has come up with such a funny idea of Latvian being similar to Serbian. People, what are you talking about?! Please... be a bit more serious and stop day-dreaming.


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## phosphore

Demian81 said:


> Just listen to you: "Latvia is down next to Poland and Lithuania over next to Estonia". I must say you really do confuse the two countries!!!


 
And that's exactly what he said.

And yes, I've been day-dreaming about Latvia my whole life.


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## Ottilie

In my opinion it's normal that we don't have similar opinions,I mean depending on your mother tongue you can perceive a language in a certain way.
  Me as a native speaker of Russian don't perceive Latvian to sound like Russian, and Latvians(most of them can speak Russian) don't perceive Latvian to sound Slavic. But I don't think that Serbian sounds like Russian as well(although Serbian sounds very Slavic). Lithuanian,for example,sounds a bit like Russian spoken very slow,but ,again,this is my own opinion.
 But maybe,for a Westerner Latvian can have a bit of Slavic touch,not Russian for sure. In my opinion,Latvian sounds a bit like Finnish ,I used to listen a lot of Latvian music - (Brainstorm especially) and this is the opinion I have. I've been to Riga and Jurmala a few years ago and Latvian sounded to me more like a Northern-European language.
 But these language may have been influenced by the socio-political context,for example Azeri/Azerbaidjani sounds a bit like Turkish spoken with Russian accent,Moldavian sounds like Romanian spoken with Russian accent and so on.


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## neonrider

Ottilie said:


> In my opinion it's normal that we don't have similar opinions,I mean depending on your mother tongue you can perceive a language in a certain way.
> Me as a native speaker of Russian don't perceive Latvian to sound like Russian, and Latvians(most of them can speak Russian) don't perceive Latvian to sound Slavic. But I don't think that Serbian sounds like Russian as well(although Serbian sounds very Slavic). Lithuanian,for example,sounds a bit like Russian spoken very slow,but ,again,this is my own opinion.
> But maybe,for a Westerner Latvian can have a bit of Slavic touch,not Russian for sure. In my opinion,Latvian sounds a bit like Finnish ,I used to listen a lot of Latvian music - (Brainstorm especially) and this is the opinion I have. I've been to Riga and Jurmala a few years ago and Latvian sounded to me more like a Northern-European language.
> But these language may have been influenced by the socio-political context,for example Azeri/Azerbaidjani sounds a bit like Turkish spoken with Russian accent,Moldavian sounds like Romanian spoken with Russian accent and so on.



It puzzles me how can a Lithuanian language sound like a Russian? Being friendly and good neighbours, but sound-alike makes no sense at all. It's like as if Romanian, Japanese or Georgian sounded like Russian ;-)


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## Ottilie

Lithuanian sounds like Russian less than Moldavian does,although Moldavian and Russian aren't close. Because population in many ex-USSR countries is bilingual(which isn't the case of Lithuania),people started to speak their mother-tongues with a Russian accent.This isn't a matter of vocabulary ,but a matter of phonetics. I said that Lithuanian sounds A BIT like slowly-spoken Russian. Latvian doesn't sound at all like Russian.
 As many people said,even Portuguese may sound Slavic(not Russian),although it's a genuine Romance language


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## neonrider

Ottilie said:


> Lithuanian sounds like Russian less than Moldavian does,although Moldavian and Russian aren't close. Because population in many ex-USSR countries is bilingual(which isn't the case of Lithuania),people started to speak their mother-tongues with a Russian accent.This isn't a matter of vocabulary ,but a matter of phonetics. I said that Lithuanian sounds A BIT like slowly-spoken Russian. Latvian doesn't sound at all like Russian.
> As many people said,even Portuguese may sound Slavic(not Russian),although it's a genuine Romance language



 Portuguese accent sounds a bit Russian because the way they pronounce their vowels (long), not because they were in contact or influenced by Russians, right. Lithuanian may sound "Russian" only if spoken by a Lithuanian who has a "Russian accent". When we speak Lithuanian abroad not a single time anyone asked "Are you from Russia?". Only in the USA sometimes when they see a person who is white and has an accent that's unfamiliar to them they think we are from Russia or Ukraine. I bet some Russians do not sound Russian if they speak a clean English.

Words such as "grybas" (mushroom) could be borrowed from Lithuania by Russians ("grib") or vice versa. Yet Lithuanians oproinohnce "grybas" differently than "grib" with a longer "y" like English "ee" and yet different than Latvian "i".

If you listen how Lithuanian emigrants speak, those who left Lithuania before 1950 or so, you will notice that they sound nothing like the "Soviet Lithuanians". Their language is cleaner, and better pronounced.

Please provide examples of words and sentences when a Lithuanian language sounds to you like Russian. It will be interesting to read and know.


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## Ottilie

I've stated(please read my posts more carefully ) that only the sound of Lithuanian *sounds a bit* as *slowly-spoken* Russian,I haven't said that Lithuanian and Russian are similar. In this same respect,Moldavian sounds even more like Russian,although it's a Romance language . Maybe originally,300 ago people didn't speak Moldavian(Romanian) with this accent,but under the influence of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union,and also because of the Russian-Moldavian bilingualism  the accent changed a lot. But this doesn't make the language similar to Russian.


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## neonrider

Ottilie said:


> I've stated(please read my posts more carefully ) that only the sound of Lithuanian *sounds a bit* as *slowly-spoken* Russian,I haven't said that Lithuanian and Russian are similar. In this same respect,Moldavian sounds even more like Russian,although it's a Romance language . Maybe originally,300 ago people didn't speak Moldavian(Romanian) with this accent,but under the influence of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union,and also because of the Russian-Moldavian bilingualism  the accent changed a lot. But this doesn't make the language similar to Russian.



I understand, but please explain what do you mean by "slowly-spoken" and can you present some examples? Lithuanian as any other language can also be slowly-spoken or fast-spoken. Please provide examples of words and sentences when a Lithuanian  language sounds to you like Russian. It will be interesting to read and  know. You can provide written examples or links to videos. I would like to learn about it, not to deny it.


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## Ottilie

I meant it sounds a bit like Russian spoken slowly,Russian-speakers usually speak fast,and Lithuanians ,at least to me,seem to speak slower. A bit is a bit,only a flavor ,nothing more
 It's hard to prove my own impression by videos,isn't it? It's just an impression,just like few years ago I happened to sit near some people in the airport and I was sure they spoke Greek(in the airport was noisy and I heard only the sound of the language) ,until one friend of mine told me:''Neah,that's Bulgarian or Macedonian''.After hearing more Bulgarian ,I don't find its sound similar to Greek.
 That's what happens when you're not accustomed to a language and you hear it for the first time,maybe that's what happened with Lithuanian. After watching more videos in Lithuanian,I don't find its sound similar to Russian .


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## neonrider

Ottilie said:


> I meant it sounds a bit like Russian spoken slowly,Russian-speakers usually speak fast,and Lithuanians ,at least to me,seem to speak slower. A bit is a bit,only a flavor ,nothing more
> It's hard to prove my own impression by videos,isn't it? It's just an impression,just like few years ago I happened to sit near some people in the airport and I was sure they spoke Greek(in the airport was noisy and I heard only the sound of the language) ,until one friend of mine told me:''Neah,that's Bulgarian or Macedonian''.After hearing more Bulgarian ,I don't find its sound similar to Greek.
> That's what happens when you're not accustomed to a language and you hear it for the first time,maybe that's what happened with Lithuanian. After watching more videos in Lithuanian,I don't find its sound similar to Russian .


 
When I put myself inside of a foreigners body and soul and try to listen to different languages - sometimes I think that Italians have a slight Russian accent and Lithuanian sounds more like Latin, Greek and (unfortunately many will argue with me on this one) like French, but is being said a lot like German, sometimes like Spanish a lot. In the U.S. once they confused my accent with Mexican. A Finn told me Lithuanian sounds to him like Bulgarian. Yet every language is unique and only to an untrained ear it can sound whatever they think it is to them for that moment. Which is incorrect way to opinionate on languages.


*Moderator note:
This thread managed to survive for almost 2 years when it shouldn't have been here in the first place. OL is about vocabulary and grammar questions, and this thread doesn't belong here.*
*It is now closed.*
*Thanks for your understanding.*


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