Introduction to Lithuanian III: Lesson 1

Welcome back.

In the previous lessons, we learned how to deal with all Lithuanian verbs (by using the ultimate for the endings and dogma for the transformation), including the usage of si (which turns actions towards the actor), the accusative (which is going back to the last vowel and adding a c below it) and also you learned some prepositions that require the accusative (words like apie (about), už (for), į (to) and no others).

In the present part, we will learn about adjectives and we will also learn how to talk about plural things, i.e. numbers. That and we will talk about the genitive case. Let’s begin.

Lithuanian for good is geras.

You might remember that labas meant good in older Lithuanian but the current meaning of labas is hello! (in Latvian, however, a cognate labs still means good).

Remember that you have to say Namaste, welcome to your house and work out how you could say a good house:

?a good house|geras namas

We are going to get bored talking about the house thus we need to learn something else:

Lithuanian for the weather is oras.

Think of an oracle trying to guess the weather. How would you say:

?good weather|geras oras

Now Lithuanians don’t like writing blogs. They don’t like it so much that the Lithuanian word for bad is actually written in the same way as the Lithuanian word for blog which is just the English blog with a Lithuanian masculine as ending: blogas. Thus:

Lithuanian for bad is blogas.

Now you can say:

?bad weather|blogas oras

Talk about a child:

?He is bad.|Jis yra blogas.

You could also skip yra in such a sentence but it’s fine either way.

Right. Now the majority of the people probably at some point were little in Lithuania because:

The Lithuanian word for little is mažas.

Let’s talk about the house:

?a little house|mažas namas

The accusative to all of the aforementioned adjectives (blogas, mažas, geras) applies just like it does to the nouns (namas, oras). How would you say:

?I have a little house.|Aš turiu mažą namą.

Nice. Let’s keep the first lesson simple as it currently is. In the next lessons, we will walk more about adjectives. Stay tuned.

Next lesson >