Mrs. Dalloway Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 4972 days ago 70 posts - 95 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, Russian Studies: GermanA2, French, Danish
| Message 25 of 31 22 May 2011 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
Found another site, with "introduction courses" to many languages, and between them there's also Lithuanian.
http://ikindalikelanguages.com/
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viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4669 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese
| Message 26 of 31 20 February 2012 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
A few comments, as a Latvian speaker who found Lithuanian quite easy:
Dambriunas et al is a very solid text. I had the opportunity to go through it with a Lithuanian teacher, and it provided a good intro.
The 4-week summer course at the University of Vilnius, located at its central campus which dates from the 16th century, was a lot of fun. When I did it (about 15 years ago) it was quite a large program, probably over 100 students at different levels, with some heritage learners and others from many different European countries. I remember using Lithuanian to communicate with a Hungarian classmate who didn't know English - odd. Here's a link:
http://www.lsk.flf.vu.lt/en
The tones are not that noticeable, except with the 'ai' dipthong where one of the tones gives it a sound more like 'ei', as in 'labai' (very). Tones are linked with the accent class, which is actually more regular than for Russian (there are four classes, one of which is fixed accent.) Maybe because I knew a lot of vocab from Latvian, I didn't find the accent system that difficult to pick up.
A last impression - for a Latvian ear, Lithuanian can sound comical at times. For example, the equivalent of "v kontse kontsov" in Russian is "galu galaa" in Latvian, stress on the first syllables. In Lithuanian it's "galuu gale" with final stress. It just sounds slightly ridiculous to me, hard to explain why.
Edited by viedums on 20 February 2012 at 8:57am
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p.nezinia Triglot Newbie Lithuania Joined 4324 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, Sign Language, English Studies: Finnish
| Message 27 of 31 25 January 2013 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
Another Lithuanian who is more than glad to help with this language is here. :)
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Surtalnar Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 4399 days ago 52 posts - 67 votes Speaks: German*, Latin, English, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical)
| Message 28 of 31 27 January 2013 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
For me, Lithuanin sounds like a mix of Slavic and Scandinavian (especially Swedish). A
very interesting language.
Edited by Surtalnar on 27 January 2013 at 1:35am
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Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4815 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish
| Message 29 of 31 27 January 2013 at 9:17pm | IP Logged |
Here is a video interview with Jonas Öhman, a Swede with almost perfect oral (grammar is perfect, only his intonation and not pronunciation sometimes betrays that he is not a native Lithuanian) and perfect written command of Lithuanian:
http://www.alchemija.tv/index.php/pasivaik-iojimai/pasivaiki ojimai-su-jonas-hman/
Here is an example of his writing:
http://www.delfi.lt/news/ringas/lit/johmanas-lietuviu-tapaty be-rinkimuose-arba-uspaskichas-kaip-atominis-karalius.d?id=5 9808657
So yes, it can be done, you can learn Lithuanian, if you try. And don't forget that Öhman is a native speaker of Swedish, a language that is almost as much inflected as English.
Edited by Antanas on 27 January 2013 at 9:18pm
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5059 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 30 of 31 27 January 2013 at 10:12pm | IP Logged |
shapd wrote:
Russians living in the Baltic states complain that it is impossible to
learn Latvian or Lithuanian, which they now need to. This is of course partly political,
but there is some truth in it.
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many of them learnt those languages and they are not the most difficult languages for a
Russian anyway. I was told that the only difficult part about Lithuanian was
pronunciation.
Edited by Марк on 27 January 2013 at 10:14pm
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Arcius Newbie Lithuania Joined 4255 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes
| Message 31 of 31 08 April 2013 at 8:55am | IP Logged |
Hi everyone, I have found some courses in Vilnius if someone would like to learn
Lithuanian. Here is a link: http://www.lingualit.lt/ Hope this will help someone. :) And
if someone will come in Lithuania contact me (gyypman@gmail.com) and I will get you a
tour through the best "beer drinking places" in Vilnius. ;]
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