Introduction to Lithuanian III: Lesson 3

In the last lesson, we talked about gender and how nouns and adjectives take on a gender. Let’s see if you remember it still:

?A house.|Namas

Now, if you want to make things plural, you follow a rule:

To make masculine nouns plural, ’s’ turns into ’ai’.

Moreover, vowels do not repeat in the ending. So, if you have two ’a’, for example, at the end of the word, they turn into one.

How would you, having this in mind, say:

?houses|namai

In Lithuanian, work is darbas. How would you say:

?works|darbai

Good. This works pretty much universally. Here’s another Lithuanian word:

In Lithuanian, word is žodis.

Just to remember, how would you say:

?a good word|geras žodis

Great, and now, if you want to turn žodis into plural, you follow our rule of s turning into ai - BUT, do you remember the word for I hear, which we learned ages ago?

?I hear|Aš girdžiu

If you looked at the formation of that word, the word ends in girdėti, the third form is therefore ’girdi’, and to make it into ’I’ you add an ’u’, so what you get is ’girdiu’ - BUT Lithuanian doesn’t like sounds like ’iu’ or ’iai’ in the end of the word in nouns or verbs, so it inserts a helping consonant - ž. The same thing happens with the plural of žodis. How do you think you would say it?

?word|žodžiai

Yes, not ’žodiai’ (although that’s essentially the formation), but with a helping vowel. That’s the idea.

Knowing that Lithuanian for ’three’ is trys, how would you say:

?three words|trys žodžiai

Great! So we have learned the masculine plurals. Now onto the feminine ones.

For the feminine plural, try turning the a into the os.

What was ’language’?

?language|kalba

Say:

?languages|kalbos

?three languages?trys kalbos

Do you remember what ’a day’ is?

?day|diena

?three days|trys dienos

Exactly. Therefore, feminine plurals of nouns are turning a to os. This even works for feminine adjectives. Try first:

?a good day|gera diena

Then do:

?good days|geros dienos

?three good days|trys geros dienos

What about:

?geros kalbos|good languages

Yes, you got it - it’s not that hard, is it? s into ai (masculine nouns) or a into os (nouns and adjectives).

But, let’s get back to nouns. What about masculine nouns? Well, the what is good, for example:

?good|geras

You could expect it to become gerai, right? So good things would be ’gerai daiktai’. But, this doesn’t happen - it actually gets rid of the a before the end, and you’re left with ’geri’. How would you say:

?good jobs|geri darbai

What about:

?good words|geri žodžiai

And, do you still remember what bad is (think about how bad blogging is):

?bad|blogas

What about then:

?bad words|blogi žodžiai

And, finally, let’s go back to the feminine track, and work out:

?bad day|bloga diena

And make it plural the feminine way:

?bad days|blogos dienos

Great! There are exceptions to these rules, of course, but, by in large, you now know how to deal with plural nouns and adjectives. If there is ever the next lesson, we will talk about numbers (one, two, three) and similar matters.

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NOTE: This appears to be the last lesson so far. The course is not marked as finished so there should probably be more lessons in the future. In the meanwhile, you might want to check out some of the other courses we have:

Lithuanian Basics	a course of Lithuanian with 44 lessons produced by Linas
Introduction to Lithuanian	a course of Lithuanian with 5 lessons produced by Linas
Introduction to Lithuanian II	a course of Lithuanian with 5 lessons produced by Linas
Greek Alphabet	a course of Greek with 5 lessons produced by Linas
Introduction to Swedish	a course of Swedish with 5 lessons produced by Linas
Forming the Future Subjunctive	a course of Portuguese with 3 lessons produced by Linas

You can also return to the main page of the labs to see all of the courses we have here.