Lithuanian Resources

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
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eginhard
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Lithuanian Resources

Postby eginhard » Sun May 15, 2016 1:15 am

I was asked about resources for Lithuanian and I thought it would probably be better in its own thread here rather than buried in my log.

Image

Textbooks
  • Beginner's Lithuanian (Dambriūnas, Klimas & Schmalstieg) - Very good textbook with stress marks on all Lithuanian text.
  • Po truputį (Ramonienė & Vilkienė, 2008) - Standard Lithuanian textbook (+ exercise book). However, all content is in Lithuanian, so it's more suited for use with a teacher.
  • Colloquial and Teach Yourself are both written by Ramonienė as well, so they're probably also quite good.

Grammar
  • Praktinė lietuvių kalbos gramatika (Ramonienė & Pribušauskaitė, 2008) - Excellent grammar targeted at learners of Lithuanian. Clear layout and lots of example sentences. Also available in English as Practical Grammar of Lithuanian.

Monolingual Dictionaries
Good dictionaries always contain stress/accentuation information.

Bilingual Dictionaries
There is rarely more than one bilingual paper dictionary available per language, so you don't really have a choice. Again, good dictionaries always contain stress/accentuation information, but the bilinguals often don't have them.
  • dict.com - No stress information! They offer 30 languages in all combinations, so individual dictionaries are not optimised. However, every word comes with lots of useful collocations/examples. Nice interface.

Websites and Online Courses
  • Bliu Bliu - For many languages, but they're based in Lithuania, so have lots of material for it, even for total beginners.
  • debeselis.net - 196 Lithuanian lessons and a forum for learners.
  • Lithuanian Out Loud - Podcast (discontinued) with 289 episodes and notes.
  • oneness.vu.lt - Short 10 lesson course.
  • University of Texas EIEOL - Early Indo-European Online series. Intro to the Baltic family through original texts from a Indo-European linguistics perspective.

Tools

Let me know if you know other good resources or if you have any questions on Lithuanian!
Last edited by eginhard on Mon May 16, 2016 11:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
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eginhard
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby eginhard » Sun May 15, 2016 1:16 am

TV
LRT live streams - 3 public channels
Wikipedia list of TV channels

Radio
LRT live streams - 3 public channels
Žinių radijas live stream - News radio station
Wikipedia list of radio stations

Newspapers
Lietuvos Žinios
Lietuvos Rytas
Delfi - Online news portal (also in English, Russian and Polish)
Wikipedia list of newspapers

Videos
Lithuanian TED talks

Films
Subjective list of "popular" and/or "classic" films:
  • Balkonas (2008) - Very cute film.
  • Dievų miškas (2005) - Based on Sruoga's novel.
  • Kaip mes žaidėme revoliuciją (2011) - Documentary on Antis and the Rock March.
  • Riešutų duona (1978) - Freely available in the LRT Archive.
  • Vaikai iš Amerikos viešbučio (1990) - Freely available in the LRT Archive.

Books
antologija.lt - Free ebooks of Lithuanian classics.

Subjective list of "popular" and/or "classic" books:
  • Altorių šešėly (Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, 1933) - Free ebook.
  • Balta drobulė (Antanas Škėma, 1958) - Free ebook.
  • Dievų Miškas (Balys Sruoga, 1957) - Free ebook.
  • Silva Rerum 1-3 (Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, 2008-2014) - Historical fiction.
  • Vilko valanda (Andrius Tapinas, 2013) - Steampunk. First of a tetralogy.
  • Vilniaus Pokeris (Ričardas Gavelis, 1989)

Recipes
http://www.delfi.lt/1000receptu/
http://www.receptai.lt/
http://www.gaspadine.lt/
http://www.mamosreceptai.lt/

Other
vaikams.lt - Lots of material intended for children. Stories, audio books, songs, nursery rhymes, old Soviet animations...
Demotivational posters - Some content might be offensive or NSFW.
anekdotai.lt - Jokes. Similar websites can be found by searching for "anekdotai".
Last edited by eginhard on Wed May 18, 2016 11:28 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby Speakeasy » Sun May 15, 2016 5:10 pm

I commend eginhard for opening this discussion thread and would like to add to the list of resources for learning Lithuanian as follows:

PREVIOUS HTLAL DISCUSSION THREADS
A G-search of the HTLAL using “Lithuanian” as the search criterion yielded at total of 217 results, most of which either make only incidental references to the language or discuss very specific questions of grammar and/or personal experiences. Those having the most relevance to the current discussion would seem to be as follows:

Balto-Slavonic Profile
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26165&PN=1

Lithuanian Resources
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=38467&PN=9

Lithuanian Dictionary
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16222&PN=42


TEXTBOOKS
Introduction to Modern Lithuanian - Leonardas Dambriunas, Antanas Klimas, et al
Beginner’s Lithuanian - Leonardas Dambriunas, Antanas Klimas, et al
Key to Exercises for Beginners Lithuanian and Introduction to Modern Lithuanian - Leonardas Dambriunas, Antanas Klimas, et al

The original textbook was published circa 1970 as “Introduction to Modern Lithuanian” and was reintroduced as “Beginner’s Lithuanian” for which the most recent edition seems to have been published in 1998. A few of the Customer Reviews on Amazon report that there were no changes to the course content across the change-of-name and the numerous editions. Although the textbook surely contains some outdated vocabulary, the course seems to have been very well-received both on Amazon and on the HTLAL. The audio recordings (4 hours) are freely available as MP3 downloadable files from the Indiana University CeLT Recorded Materials Archive website which also contains a brief description of the contents of the recordings.
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eginhard
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby eginhard » Mon May 16, 2016 11:41 am

Thanks for the comment. Beginner's Lithuanian is very good indeed and I've started with that one myself, so I don't know how I could forget to add it. It's in there now.
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eginhard
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby eginhard » Wed May 18, 2016 11:30 am

I've now added a wide range of native materials to the second post of this thread. Again, let me know if you know any other good resources or if you're looking for something specific.
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby jpazzz » Fri Aug 19, 2016 2:34 am

Sveikus, A quick skimming of this topic may have missed them, but two resources, both excellent in their way are:

Pimsleur Lithuanian (a short, five tape and presumably five disc) course, which if you can stand Pimsleur's mind deadening pace
will be a decent start on accent,

Easy Way To Lithuanian which is generally well regarded. I have the book and tapes, but I believe that both are available free on the Internet. This is a bit of a sleeper; at first glance it appears to be nothing more than a phrase book, but if actively pursued, it will make you reasonably functional.

I grew up in a household where my grandmother ( a dour, unsmiling woman who taught herself to read and write both Lithuanian and English...perhaps that's why she was so dour!) spoke Lithuanian . Unfortunately, like all of my contemporaries, I had no interest in Lithuanian, so I retained a vocabulary of about three words: Sveikus, aciu, and kamnus. The accent, however, stuck; apparently when, in the early 60s, I was going to school in Germany between an AB and a Ph.D. I spoke German with a Lithuanian accent!

Good Luck with your pursuit of a wonderfully interesting language.

Cheers,
John
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby Kraut » Sat Oct 28, 2017 9:22 am

Prussia had a long tradition of Lithuanian philology. The two titles are more of historical interest. More recent is Kurschat's Thesaurus, it covers about a century of dictionary work on Prussian-Lithuanian vocabulary.
Alexander Kurschat: Litauisch-deutsches Wörterbuch. Thesaurus linguae lituanicae. 4 Bd. Göttingen 1968 ff.
4 volumes downloadable for free:
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/inde ... ander&l=de

-------
A 19th century language guide to Lithuanian, it has some nice tables that illustrate how much archaic structures had been preserved in Prussian-Lithuanian, there is the grammatical dual form in nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns ..
Friedrich Becker: Der kleine Littauer. Das Wichtigste aus der Sprachlehre, mehrere alphabetisch geordnete Wortregister und 200 Sprichworte. Zum Anfangsgebrauch bei Erlernung der littauischen Umgangssprache für verschiedene Geschäftsverhältnisse. Tilsit 1866

http://www.epaveldas.lt/vbspi/biRecord. ... rdId=24692
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby crush » Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:02 pm

Interlinear Books has a book for Lithuanian:
https://interlinearbooks.com/lithuanian/
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby Kraut » Sat Oct 28, 2017 9:39 pm

@crush
Interlinear Books has a book for Lithuanian:
https://interlinearbooks.com/lithuanian/


Yes, this is the only way to approach Lithuanian, translation. It's completely unaccessible even if you speak a dozen of other languages. Interlinear tr. translates word for word and keeps the original word order.
Hoewever, your text study must be accompanied by the audio, Lithuanian pronunciation is very special.
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Re: Lithuanian Resources

Postby Henkkles » Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:22 pm

Glossika Lithuanian is purchasable until 12th of November 2017, after which all courses will be taken out and replaced by the Glossika online interface, which has the same Lithuanian course, but at $30 a month.

https://glossika.com/courses/fluency123/lithuanian
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