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Lithuanian alphabet Lietuvių abėcėlė | |
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Script type | |
Time period | 1906 – present |
Languages | Lithuanian |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Egyptian hieroglyphs
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Child systems | Samogitian alphabet |
Unicode | |
Subset of Latin | |
Lithuanian orthography employs a Latin-script alphabet of 32 letters, two of which denote sounds not native to the Lithuanian language. Additionally, it uses five digraphs.
Today, the Lithuanian alphabet consists of 32 letters. It features an unusual collation order in that "Y" occurs between I nosinė (Į) and J. While absent from the alphabet, letters Q, W and X have their place in collation order: Q is located between P and R, and W with X are preceded by letter V. Those letters may be used in spelling of foreign names.
Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A | Ą | B | C | Č | D | E | Ę | Ė | F | G | H | I | Į | Y | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | Š | T | U | Ų | Ū | V | Z | Ž |
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
a | ą | b | c | č | d | e | ę | ė | f | g | h | i | į | y | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | š | t | u | ų | ū | v | z | ž |
Names of letters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
a | a nosinė | bė | cė | čė | dė | e | e nosinė | ė | ef | gė | ha | i trumpoji | i nosinė | i ilgoji | jot | ka | el | em | en | o | pė | er | es | eš | tė | u trumpoji | u nosinė | u ilgoji | vė | zė | žė |
The distinctive Lithuanian letter Ė was used for the first time in Daniel Klein's Grammatica Litvanica , and has been firmly established in the Lithuanian language since then. [1] [2] [3] [4] However, linguist August Schleicher used Ë (with two points above it) instead of Ė for expressing the same. [5] In the Grammatica Litvanica Klein also established the letter W for marking the sound V, the use of which was later abolished in the Lithuanian language (it was replaced with letter V, notably by authors of the Varpas newspaper). [1] [5] [6] The usage of letter V instead of W especially increased since the early 20th century, likely considerably influenced by Lithuanian press and schools. [6]
Due to the Polish influence, the Lithuanian alphabet included sz , cz and the Polish Ł for the sound [ɫ] and regular L (without a following i) for the sound [lʲ]: łupa, lutas. [3] During the Lithuanian National Revival in the 19th century the Polish Ł was abolished, while digraphs sz, cz (that are also common in the Polish orthography) were replaced with letters š and č from the Czech orthography because they formally were shorter. [3] [5] [7] Nevertheless, another argument to abolish digraphs sz, cz was to distinguish the Lithuanian language from the Polish language. [5] The new letters š and č were cautiously used in publications intended for more educated readers (e.g. Varpas, Tėvynės sargas , Ūkininkas ), however digraphs sz, cz continued to be in use in publications intended for less educated readers as š and č caused tension in society; š and č have prevailed only since 1906. [8] [9]
The Lithuanians also adopted letter ž from the Czechs. [3] [5]
The letters ą and ę were taken from the Polish spelling for what at the time were nasal vowels. They were first used by Renaissance Lithuanian writers. Later the letters į and ų were introduced for the remaining nasal vowels, which have since denasalized. [3] [5] Letter ū is the latest addition by linguist Jonas Jablonskis. [3] [5]
Acute, grave, and macron/tilde accents can mark stress and vowel length. However, these are generally not used, except in dictionaries and where needed for clarity. In addition, Lithuanian orthography uses five digraphs (Ch Dz Dž Ie Uo); these function as sequences of two letters for collation purposes. The "Ch" digraph represents a voiceless velar fricative, while the others are straightforward compositions of their component letters. The letters F and H, as well as the digraph CH, denote sounds only appearing in loanwords.
Although the Lithuanian alphabet lacks the letters Q (kū), W (vė dviguboji) and X (iks), these letters may be used in foreign personal names.
For foreign names, two spelling variants are used: original spelling (e. g. George Walker Bush as a title of an encyclopedic article or as a name of an author of a book, or George'as Walkeris Bushas in a sentence, conforming to the Lithuanian morphology) and phonetic spelling adapted to the Lithuanian phonology (e. g. Džordžas Volkeris Bušas). In Soviet times, phonetic spelling was the only standard way to write foreign names in Lithuanian (original spelling could be shown in parentheses if needed), but in post-Soviet times the original spelling came to be widely used. The Lithuanian Wikipedia uses original spelling in article titles, but phonetic spelling in article texts.
Grapheme | Sound (IPA) | |
---|---|---|
Short | Long | |
a | ɐ | äː |
ą | ||
e | ɛ ( e̞ ) | æː |
ę | ||
ė | eː | |
i | ɪ | |
į | iː | |
y | ||
o | ɔ | oː |
u | ʊ | |
ų | uː | |
ū |
⟨o⟩ is short only in loanwords. ⟨a e⟩ are always short without accent and under accent in endings -a, -e, -es, in comparative, in pronouns, and in loanwords; otherwise, they are usually long. [10]
Grapheme | Sound (IPA) | |
---|---|---|
Hard | Soft | |
b | b | bʲ |
c | t̪͡s̪ | t͡sʲ |
č | t͡ʃ | t͡ɕ |
ch | x | xʲ |
d | d̪ | dʲ |
dz | d̪͡z̪ | d͡zʲ |
dž | d͡ʒ | d͡ʑ |
f | f | fʲ |
g | ɡ | ɡʲ |
h | ɣ | ɣʲ |
j | j | |
k | k | kʲ |
l | ɫ | lʲ |
m | m | mʲ |
n | n̪ | nʲ |
p | p | pʲ |
r | ɾ | ɾʲ |
s | s̪ | sʲ |
š | ʃ | ɕ |
t | t̪ | tʲ |
v | v | vʲ |
z | z̪ | zʲ |
ž | ʒ | ʑ |
Consonants are always palatalized before ⟨e ę ė i į y⟩; before ⟨a ą o u ų ū⟩, palatalization is denoted by inserting an ⟨i⟩ between the consonant and the vowel.
The majority of the Lithuanian alphabet is in the Unicode block C0 controls and basic Latin (non-accented symbols), and the rest of the Lithuanian alphabet (Ą ą Č č Ę ę Ė ė Į į Š š Ų ų Ū ū Ž ž) is in the Latin Extended-A.
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός, from διακρίνω. The word diacritic is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an attributive sense, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritics, such as the acute ⟨ó⟩, grave ⟨ò⟩, and circumflex ⟨ô⟩, are often called accents. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth vowel letter of the English alphabet. Its name in English is wye, plural wyes.
Lithuanian is an East Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of Lithuanians and the official language of Lithuania as well as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are approximately 2.8 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 1 million speakers elsewhere. Around half a million inhabitants of Lithuania of non-Lithuanian background speak Lithuanian daily as a second language.
The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. It is used primarily in Hungarian or Chuvash, and consequently it is sometimes referred to by typographers as hungarumlaut. The signs formed with a regular umlaut are letters in their own right in the Hungarian alphabet—for instance, they are separate letters for the purpose of collation. Letters with the double acute, however, are considered variants of their equivalents with the umlaut, being thought of as having both an umlaut and an acute accent.
The Danish and Norwegian alphabet is the set of symbols, forming a variant of the Latin alphabet, used for writing the Danish and Norwegian languages. It has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian) and 1948 (Danish):
A caronKARR-ən. or háček, is a diacritic mark placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term caron, while linguists prefer the Czech (language) word háček.
The modern German alphabet consists of the twenty-six letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet:
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.
Filipinoorthography specifies the correct use of the writing system of the Filipino language, the national and co-official language of the Philippines.
The Polish alphabet is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography. It is based on the Latin alphabet but includes certain letters (9) with diacritics: the acute accent – kreska: ⟨ć, ń, ó, ś, ź⟩; the overdot – kropka: ⟨ż⟩; the tail or ogonek – ⟨ą, ę⟩; and the stroke – ⟨ł⟩. ⟨q⟩, ⟨v⟩, and ⟨x⟩, which are used only in foreign words, are usually absent from the Polish alphabet. Additionally, before the standardization of Polish spelling, ⟨qu⟩ was sometimes used in place of ⟨kw⟩, and ⟨x⟩ in place of ⟨ks⟩.
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is the generalization of the alphabetical order to other data types, such as sequences of numbers or other ordered mathematical objects.
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.
German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.
Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments.
Ch is a digraph in the Latin script. It is treated as a letter of its own in the Chamorro, Old Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Igbo, Uzbek, Quechua, Ladino, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Ukrainian, Japanese, Latynka, and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. Formerly ch was also considered a separate letter for collation purposes in Modern Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes in Polish; now the digraph ch in these languages continues to be used, but it is considered as a sequence of letters and sorted as such.
Polish orthography is the system of writing the Polish language. The language is written using the Polish alphabet, which derives from the Latin alphabet, but includes some additional letters with diacritics. The orthography is mostly phonetic, or rather phonemic—the written letters correspond in a consistent manner to the sounds, or rather the phonemes, of spoken Polish. For detailed information about the system of phonemes, see Polish phonology.
Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. The diaeresis was abolished by the last Orthography Agreement. Accented letters and digraphs are not counted as separate characters for collation purposes.
Czech orthography is a system of rules for proper formal writing (orthography) in Czech. The earliest form of separate Latin script specifically designed to suit Czech was devised by Czech theologian and church reformist Jan Hus, the namesake of the Hussite movement, in one of his seminal works, De orthographia bohemica.
Norwegian orthography is the method of writing the Norwegian language, of which there are two written standards: Bokmål and Nynorsk. While Bokmål has for the most part derived its forms from the written Danish language and Danish-Norwegian speech, Nynorsk gets its word forms from Aasen's reconstructed "base dialect", which is intended to represent the distinctive dialectal forms. Both standards use a 29-letter variant of the Latin alphabet and the same orthographic principles.