Baltic language in the context of "Lithuanians"

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⭐ Core Definition: Baltic language

The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5–7.0 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Europe. Together with the Slavic languages, they form the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European family.

Scholars usually regard them as a single subgroup divided into two branches: West Baltic (containing only extinct languages) and East Baltic (containing at least two living languages, Lithuanian, Latvian, and by some counts including Latgalian and Samogitian as separate languages rather than dialects of those two). In addition, the existence of the Dnieper-Oka language is hypothesized, with the extinct Golyad language being the only known member. The range of the East Baltic linguistic influence once possibly reached as far as the Ural Mountains, but this hypothesis has been questioned.

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👉 Baltic language in the context of Lithuanians

Lithuanians (Lithuanian: lietuviai) are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another two million make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil and Canada. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family along with Latvian. According to the census conducted in 2021, 84.6% of the population of Lithuania identified themselves as Lithuanians. Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.

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Baltic language in the context of Golyad language

Golyad (Russian: голя́дский язык) or East Galindian (Latvian: austrumgalindu valoda, Lithuanian: rytų galindų kalba) is a poorly attested extinct Baltic language of the Dnieper Balts living in the Protva basin in present-day Russia. The Golyad people are believed to have descended from the Moshchiny culture and is the only known ethnonym for the Dnieper-Oka language. Due to there being no known written documents of the Golyad language, the language is poorly known. The language went extinct in the 12th century due to Early Slavic migration and assimilation. It is believed the vernaculars of the Finno-Ugrians and Volga Finns adopted loanwords from East Galindian.

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Baltic language in the context of Declension

In linguistics, declension (verb: to decline) is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners. It serves to indicate number (e.g. singular, dual, plural), case (e.g. nominative, accusative, genitive, or dative), gender (e.g. masculine, feminine, or neuter), and a number of other grammatical categories. Inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.

Declension occurs in many languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the Andes), Indo-European (e.g. German, Icelandic, Irish, Lithuanian and Latvian, Slavic, Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient and Modern Greek, Albanian, Romanian, Kurdish, and Modern Armenian), Bantu (e.g. Swahili, Zulu, Kikuyu), Semitic (e.g. Modern Standard Arabic), Finno-Ugric (e.g. Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian), and Turkic (e.g. Turkish).

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Baltic language in the context of Curonian language

The Curonian language (German: Kurisch; Latvian: kuršu valoda; Lithuanian: kuršių kalba), or Old Curonian, was a Baltic language spoken by the Curonians, a Baltic tribe who inhabited Courland (now western Latvia and northwestern Lithuania).

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Baltic language in the context of Semigallian language

Semigallian, also known as Zemgalian, was an East Baltic language of the Baltic language sub-family of the Indo-European languages.

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