By Linas
So there are seven cases. One of them is the nominative which is the subject case or the case you see in the dictionary so you always know it. It as well always ends in the endings we have talked about as for masculine or a or ė in feminine so there are just six we have to learn.
Out of this six cases, two are strong. In fact it is that one of these is completely strong, the second is strong in its feminine version only but still is considered strong. We will be learning these strong cases in a flash now:
You can remember the strong cases by remembering the phrase of where.
In fact, not only can you remember the cases but you can also remember their endings for some forms by remembering that phrase: of where.
Alternatively to remember that of and where cases are stronger you can remember the word STRONGER of which the only two vowels symbolize the vowels in the words of and where.
We have talked about the first case already. It is the case of to. This is the truly strong case. We will be calling if the "of" case.
Let’s take a look at how we form this case.
We have a word such as daiktas (a thing). The ending is as. The vowel in the ending is a (it could be ė if the word were gėlė or also a if the word was galva)
Here is what we do universally for all cases:
1. We note the vowel ("a" in the case of daiktas).
2. We get rid of the ending (daiktas - as = daikt).
3. We look at the letter of the case (it is "a") and we make it strong if the case is strong (it is strong in the case of of so we make "a" into "o") or weak if the case is weak and re-add it (we get daikto).
4. We add the case ending if there is any (there is no case ending for the masculine version of of, I will tell you whenever there is one).
So we had daiktas ("a" is the vowel at question), it loses its ending and becomes daikt, then the of case is strong so "a" moves up the otaku ladder and it becomes o and there is no case ending so we get daikto. Here we go, we made it!
Do you remember how to say:
You probably remember that the word he waits which is laukia allies with nori so you have to say I wait of it instead of I wait it. Apply this to say literally I wait of a bus which means I wait for a bus:
What about:
You know that ne also always requires the ne case. So if he sees is jis mato, how do you say literally I do not see of a bus:
Let’s get one more word which will make it easier for us to get the next case in Lithuanian.
A house is namas in Lithuanian.
How would you say:
Here is one thing which is very peculiar to this "of" case and it doesn’t really happy in other cases so this is the only one you will have to remember:
The feminine version of the "of" case has the extra ending s.
So it’s not the "of" case but the "ofs" case if it is feminine.
Anyway, let’s have it in mind and get the "of" (or in this case the "ofs") case for some of the feminine words we have learnt.
A flower is gėlė. Let’s play the procedure on it:
First, the ending is ė. Then we get rid of the ending and we get gėl. The "of(s)" case is indeed a strong case so we will be using the strong version which is ė so we add it back and we get gėlė and we add that s because it is the feminine version of the word and thus we have gelės which means of a flower.
How would you say:
Finally, I will leave it up to you to do that for the word galva (head). I will only give you some hints that the ending letter is obviously a, it is a strong case (the "of" case) so it will move up the otaku ladder and also it is a feminine word so we have that s ending for it. How would you say:
Lithuanian for form is forma.
How would you say:
Alternatively you could say:
This works nicely.
If you think the procedure is easy then you will see it’s not. as you get used to it. We will learn the second strong case (although it is only half-strong) in the next lesson.