Lithuania Languages

Lithuanian is the official language. Along with Latvian and Old Prussian, Lithuanian is a member of the Baltic subdivision of the Indo-European family of languages. It is a highly inflected language resembling ancient Sanskrit. Because Sanskrit has great importance in the study of comparative linguistics, Lithuanian received much scholarly attention in the late nineteenth century. But it did not serve as the official language of the country until Lithuania’s independence, 1918-1940, and more recently, 1991 to the present. It has a Roman alphabet with 32 letters. Genealogical sources in Lithuania reflect Russian political domination and are primarily in Russian. There are also some records in Latin, German, Polish, and Hebrew. Lithuanian language is used only in twentieth century records.