Lithuanian orthography employs a
Latin-script alphabet
A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-lette ...
of 32 letters, two of which denote sounds not native to the
Lithuanian language. Additionally, it uses five digraphs.
Alphabet
Today, the Lithuanian alphabet consists of 32
letters
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alpha ...
. It features an unusual
collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
order in that "Y" occurs between I
nosinė (Į) and J.
Acute
Acute may refer to:
Science and technology
* Acute angle
** Acute triangle
** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology
* Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset.
** Acute toxicity, the adverse ef ...
,
grave
A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as gravey ...
, and
macron/
tilde
The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
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. Q (kū), w (vė dviguboji) and x (iks) are only used in foreign 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, conform 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
The Lithuanian Wikipedia ( lt, Lietuviškoji Vikipedija) is the Lithuanian version of Wikipedia. It is the largest free Lithuanian internet encyclopedia. The Wikipedia started in 2003, however gained a significant number of articles only in 2004. ...
uses original spelling in article titles, but phonetic spelling in article texts.
Sound–spelling correspondences
is short only in loanwords. 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.
Consonants are always palatalized before ; before , palatalization is denoted by inserting an between the consonant and the vowel.
Unicode
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.
See also
*
Lithuanian phonology
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lithuanian Orthography
Lithuanian language
Indo-European Latin-script orthographies