000 languages in the world but not all of them had been investigated. The most investigated family of languages is Indo-European. Two milliard people speak it. This language had spread in Asia, south Europe, Iran and India one million years ago.
Some Indo-European languages developed and separated from its stem. Other languages survived the features of its parent languages. In these languages the opposition between long and short vowels was retained (islaikyti). Also were retained ancient endings.
Indo-European languages consist of eleven branches. The main of them are: Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Italic-Romanic, Albanian, Armenian etc.
Baltic branch. .
To it belongs two living languages: Lithuanian and Latvian and also dead languages: Prussian, Jotvingian, Curonian, Ziemgalian, Selian. .
Except Prussian language they did not leave any written monuments. The monuments of Prussian language survived three vocabularies written in German letters. .
The name Baltic languages appeared only in the 19th century. Up to that time baltics they were called Aistians.
Baltic languages are very close to Slavic language, but they are not the same. There are two groups of Baltic language branch western and eastern. To the eastern group belong dead languages: Prussian and Jotvingian. Living languages: Lithuanian and Latvian and also curonian. Lithuanian is spoken by 3,4 million people. The first monument of Lithuanian languages:.
a) anonymous prayer text written by hand in Karaliaucius.
b) 1546 the translation of Luther Catechism by Mazvydas.
c) Sirvydas 5 volume dictionary.
d) Clains grammatical-lituanica 1653.
Lithuanian languages separated itself from Latvian in the 6-7 centuries. Then Lithuanian languages began to split in to lowlanders and highlanders dialects.
At the beginning of the 20th century on the basis of the suwalkian dialect the standard Lithuanian appeared. .
