Lithuanian language

“ When the first translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Lithuanian language appeared in London, I published in the Scientific and Literary Gazette of Kœnigsberg, an article wherein, while rendering full justice to the efforts of the learned interpreter and to the pious motives of the Bible Society, I pointed out several slight errors, and showed, moreover, that this version could only be useful to one portion of the Lithuanian people. ”

“ Behind this natural barrier Lithuanian nationality was born in the middle of the thirteenth century under the leadership of Mindvog, an energetic chieftain who insured his [105] own supremacy by causing the leaders of rival clans to be put to death. With the help of the Poles the Lithuanians eventually checked the easterly expansion of the Teutons.
The region occupied by Lithuanians in former times can be traced today by the distribution of the type of dwelling peculiar to this people. The ancient area exceeds the borders of the present linguistic zone. ”

“ The grammar, it is to be said, is far more like that of the Greek than like that of the Latin language.
[C] There is a language, the Lithuanian, spoken by a Leth-Slavonic people, northwest of the Baltic, near Poland, which has preserved in a remarkable and unique manner forms of the old Aryan speech which are extinct in other European tongues. ”

“ No language of modern Europe presents the flexional type in a purer shape than Lithuanian, where we find preserved nearly the same grammatical system as in old Sanskrit, yet no one would assert that the culture of Lithuanian peasants is higher than that of Shakespeare, whose language has lost an enormous amount of the old flexions. ”

“ After we passed Koeningsburg near the Eytkunen limit of Lithuania, some persons, one of them in the uniform of a soldier, began to speak the Lithuanian language. I asked them who they were and they told me they were Lithuanian officials returning from Berlin.
As soon as we arrived at Eytkunen, the German inspector asked to see our passports, and seeing on mine no visa by the German authority, I was told to return to Berlin for the necessary signature. I informed him that the consul of Switzerland in New York put the visa on my passport, permitting me to cross Germany. ”

“ While at Prague he commenced the study of Slavonic languages, and with the assistance of the Vienna academy of sciences undertook in 1852 a journey of scientific research into Prussian Lithuania, the fruits of which were the first scientific examination and description of the character of the Lithuanian language. ”

“ The territory where Lettish is spoken lies immediately to the north of that occupied by the Lithuanians; it is bounded on the west by the Baltic and on the south by the political boundary dividing the government of Kurland, the whole of which is Lettish, from that of Kovno, which is purely Lithuanian. Lettish is also the language of the southern half of the government of Livonia and of the western half of that of Vitebsk. ”

“ Equally amazing is the indifference of the Government and of Americans generally to the menace involved in the increasing numbers of these inveterate aliens to institutions that are fundamentally American.
The Lithuanians and Magyars are often classed with the Slavs. They hotly resent this inclusion, however, for they are distinct racial strains of ancient lineage. An adverse fate has left the Lithuanian little of his old civilization except his language. Political and economic suppression has made sad havoc of what was once a proud and prosperous people. ”

“ South of the Gulf of Finland the Esthonians or Chuds still retain a primitive form of Mongolian. In the neighboring Letto-Lithuanian group, on the other hand, a speech which is closely akin to the old Aryan is employed. Almost any Lithuanian peasant can understand simple phrases in Sanskrit. The survival of archaic languages in this section of Europe is the result of isolation provided by a forested and marshy country in which folk-characteristics maintained their ancient forms. From the racial standpoint Esthonians, Letts and Lithuanians are fair, generally tall, narrow-faced and long-headed. ”

“ In Prussia the Crusaders forbade officials and all who approached the court to use the Lithuanian tongue, under penalty of death; they banished from the country, together with the Jews and gipsies, the Wajdelotes, or Lithuanian bards, who alone knew and could relate the national annals. Again in Lithuania, after the introduction of the Christian faith and the Polish language, the ancient priests and the native speech fell into disrepute, and were forgotten ”

“ Lithuanian as well as in several German dialects, such as the Thuringian, which have a singing character, and when it falls upon a diphthong the second element of the diphthong is distinctly raised in pitch. Naturally it is usually found with diphthongs and long vowels, but short vowels combined with a liquid may also carry the circumflex. In Greek it commonly implies a contraction, the circumflex resulting from the coalescence of a vowel which has the acute accent with one which has the grave. [172]
The Vedic system of accentuation best exhibits the fundamental character of accent of pitch. ”

“ Then comes the Lithuanian question; upon which the reasoning is far more elaborate; consisting chiefly in the exposition of an undoubted fact, and the suggestion of a new interpretation of it. No two parts of the world are so distant but what they may illustrate each other’s ethnology; and, in the present case, the ancient geography of Kherson and the Crimea is explained by that of Persia, Cabul, and Hindostan.
It has long been known that the ancient, sacred, and literary language of Northern India has its closest grammatical affinities in Europe. ”

“ Language and Literature.—The Lithuanian, Lettic or Lettish and Borussian or Old Prussian languages together constitute a distinct linguistic subdivision, commonly called the Baltic subdivision, within the Indo-European family. They have many affinities to the Slavonic languages, and are sometimes included with them in a single linguistic group, the Balto-Slavic. In their phonology, however, though not in their structure the Baltic languages appear to be more primitive than the Slavonic. Lithuanian, for example, retains the archaic diphthongs which disappear in Slavonic—Lith. ”

“ The system of consonants is undoubtedly the most persistent part of a language, and there is no question but that the Celtic and Lithuanian, of all the Aryac tongues, have kept most closely to the primitive system of consonants once common to them all.93 The Lithuanian is spoken by a limited community on the coast of the Baltic sea, while the Celtic, in proto-historic times, occupied the whole of Great Britain and northern Belgium, France and Spain. ”

“ For a long while Christianity had sought to penetrate by two different channels,—under the Latin form from Poland, and under the Greek form from Russia. The fierce war sustained by the Lithuanians against the military monks of the North had rendered Catholicism particularly hateful to them. Under Olgerd the people of Wilna had risen, and fourteen Franciscans were slain. On the other side the larger part of the Lithuanian conquests was composed of Russian territory, and Lithuania underwent the influence of the Russian religion as well as of the Russian language. ”

“ Though the mass of the Lithuanian population, in spite or several centuries of union with Poland, had never been assimilated to the dominant race, and remained in language and creed more nearly allied to the Russians than the Poles, the nobles formed an integral part of the Polish nation, and possessed sufficient power over their serfs to drive them into the field to fight for they knew not what. ”

“ Accordingly the vocabulary of Lithuanian betrays Polish, that of Lettish, German influence. Lettish has also been influenced by the proximity of its neighbours of Finnish race, whom the Letts gradually propelled northwards into the extreme northern corner of the promontory of Kurland, where a portion of them still remains, and into Livonia proper. Lithuanian has also been much influenced by White Russian, the dialect current in those provinces which in the Middle Ages formed the lands of the Lithuanian crown, and later with Lithuania became part of Poland. ”

“ I would not dare to undertake to describe to you the spirit of patriotism of the Lithuanians in their native land, for I am a Lithuanian, and some may say that it is quite natural to praise one's own. ”

“ The Lithuanian community in America publish newspapers, books, and dictionaries with an energy that betrays the influence of their new surroundings, yet the wholesale appropriation of necessary but inadequately assimilated Americanisms, together with prolonged absence from the secular traditions of the mother-country, must at an increasing rate lower the standard of linguistic purity. ”

“ It is well known that Lithuanian is, of all European languages, the one most similar to the Indo-Iranian group. For the etymology of the Lithuanian word dainà, probably cognate with Vedic Sanskrit dhénā, see S. G. Oliphant, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, xxxii. 393–413 (1912) . The writer is collecting the material on Baltic religion with a view to discussing it, in its presentational and comparative aspects, in a separate volume. ”

“ Lithuania, formerly a grand-duchy occupying portions of the valleys of the Dwina, Niemen, Dnieper, and Bug; for centuries connected with Poland; passed to Russia in 1814. The Lithuanians are a distinct race of the Indo-European stock, fair and handsome, with a language of their own, and a literature rich in folk-lore and songs. Of a strong religious temperament, they embraced Christianity late (13th century) , and still retain many pagan superstitions; formerly serfs, they are now a humble peasantry engaged in agriculture, cattle-breeding, and bee-keeping. ”

“ Lithuania.♦ Of this family were the tribes of Curland in their own peninsula, of Samigola or Semigallia, the Samaites of Samogitia to the south, the proper Lithuanians south of them, the Jatwages, Jatwingi—in many spellings—forming a Lithuanian wedge between the Slavonic lands of Mazovia and Black Russia. ♦Prussia.♦ The Lithuanians, strictly so called, reached the coast just north of the Niemen; from the mouth of the Niemen to the mouth of the Vistula the coast was held by the Prussians. Of these nations, Aryan and non-Aryan, the Lithuanians alone founded a national dominion in historic times. ”

“ The brightest period of Lithuanian [pg iv] history occurs in the time of Olgierd and Witold, whose rule extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. But this monstrous empire, having sprung up too quickly, could not create in itself internal strength, to unite and invigorate its differing portions. The Lithuanian nationality, spread over too large a surface of territory, lost its proper character. The Litwini subjugated many Russian tribes, and entered into political relations with Poland. ”

“ But the name of Lithuanian provinces was usually given only to the governments of Vilna and Kovno, and, though Nicholas I. prohibited the use of this name, it is still used, even in official documents. In Russia, all the White-Russian population of the former Polish Lithuania are usually considered as Lithuanians, the name of Zhmud being restricted to Lithuanians proper. ”

“ Vitold himself, though called Grand Prince, rules Lithuania by appointment of Yagello, and is merely viceroy. His merit, therefore, will fall on the king. And what glory for newly baptized Lithuania, and for Polish power, if their united armies shall carry the Cross to regions in which if the name of the Saviour has ever been mentioned, it was only to be blasphemed, regions in which the foot of a Pole or Lithuanian has never stood up to this time! ”

“ Thus dreaming and finishing his evening prayer, gradually the last court apparitor in Lithuania fell asleep.
Such were the amusements and disputes of those days in the quiet Lithuanian village, while the rest of the world was swimming in tears and blood, and while that man, the god of war, surrounded by a cloud of regiments, armed with a thousand cannon, harnessing to his chariot golden eagles beside those of silver,32 was flying from the deserts of Libya to the lofty Alps, casting thunderbolt on thunderbolt, at the Pyramids, at Tabor, Marengo, Ulm, and Austerlitz. ”

“ As to the Lithuanian, it has, of course, its closest affinities with the Slavonic tongues of Russia, Bohemia, Poland, and Servia, since the Slavonic and Lithuanic are two branches of the same Sarmatian stock. But when we go beyond the Sarmatian stock, and bring into the field of comparison the other tongues of Europe, the Latin, the Greek, the German, and the Keltic, we find that, though the Lithuanic is more or less clearly connected with all of them, it is, beyond comparison, far liker the old Indian or Sanskrit. ”

“ The next morning I was fortunate indeed to say mass for the first time in the church in which I was baptized. That afternoon at a meeting of the Lithuanian Sales Corporation, I lectured on American Lithuanians and Americans in general. Monday I went to Kaunas, or Kovno, to meet the [Pg 10] [A] President of Lithuania, Anthony Smetona, to extend to him the congratulations of the Lithuanian Total Abstinance Organization of America. ”

“ When the Germans occupied Lithuania they did not treat them as roughly as the Poles are doing at this moment. For example, I was in Lithuania when the Poles took Seinai, the seat of Bishop Karosas, which is a Lithuanian city, imprisoned the Lithuanian Bishop in his residence, expelled the ecclesiastical students from their seminary, arrested two priests and carried them to Poland. If any of the remaining priests are called out on a sick call, they send armed soldiers to accompany the priest and guard his movements strictly. ”