Subačius Giedrius (ed.) The Lithuanian language: traditions and trends

2nd edition. — Vilnius: The Lithuanian Institute, 2005. — 23 p.: ill. — ISBN 9955548096.Due to their similar political situations and historical development in the 20th century, the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – are often treated as sisters, and referred to as Baltic countries. This name is even applied to the entire region. But professional linguists have always pointed out that this is not an appropriate designation. The term Balt was coined in the 19th century by the German linguist Ferdinand Nesselman to name one of the branches of the Indo-European languages spoken on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Linguists had already known Indo-European groups such as Germanic, Romance and Slavic; now they discovered another group of Indo-European languages, the Baltic languages. Since then, in linguistics, the term has been applied only in reference to the true Baltic languages: the living Lithuanian and Latvian languages, and dead languages such as Curonian, Semigallian, Selonian, Jatvingian and Galindian. Estonian is quite different: not only is it outside the Baltic group, but it is not even an Indo-European language, for it belongs to the Finno-Ugric group. Thus, when we hear the word Baltic, we should not forget that for a linguist, and even for a Lithuanian, it may not include Estonian. Lithuanians make up about 80 per cent of the population of Lithuania. This means that more than three million people (perhaps three and a half million) consider Lithuanian to be their mother tongue. It is spoken by the autochthon Lithuanian populations in some border areas of Poland and Belarus, and by numerous Lithuanian émigrés in other countries. The largest émigré groups are to be found in the United States.