By Linas
Let’s get back to the usual (not the frequent) word for is:
What if you wanted to talk about to be? General A? Yrti? Maybe apply it to esa to get esti? Nope, doesn’t work, sorry.
You make the Lithuanian word for to be not from the usual “is” but from the frequent “is”!
Also, the good news is that the mess ends here: the Lithuanian word for to be is both used for to be and for to frequently be and you don’t make the distinction anymore.
So, you make to be from the frequent “is” which is būna. What do you think it would be? Būnti? That’s what it should be. However, this word is used so often and Lithuanians wanted to shorten it as much as possible. You can’t take out the ti because it is necessary to show that it is to be. Bū is kind of the beginning of the word so that stays as well. But you want to shorten it very badly. What is left that you could take out? The n, of course. So, you take it out.
What do you think the Lithuanian word for to be is:
Try speaking as a man to apply it:
Do you remember how we used to say:
You say it as I can it do because daryti, the second word, steals tai. The second word also steals the word for here - čia. Having that in mind, say:
Wow. You could even do Shakespeare if you knew the word for or.
The Lithuanian word for or is ar.
Now, the culmination.
Yeaaah. Remember having read that? I do. Except I remember reading it in Lithuanian. Now, you can read it in Lithuanian too (well, the title, at least ;).
Now as you know the word for to be, you have a window open to the future. How would you say:
In fact, I’m tired of talking about here especially when the word for there is so easy:
There in Lithuanian is ten.
The e in the Lithuanian ten isn’t pronounced like in the English number ten but more like the a in English band.
Alright, have in mind that ten takes the same relative position as čia does. Say:
Talk to a group of people (thus it is the same as if you were talking to you formally) and say (also, remember that you are emphasizing here and there so you move them to the end of the sentence in Lithuanian to emphasize them):
Okay, there is one more thing. Do you remember that the future form for he drops the last i because it likes to be SHORT?
Well, it likes to be short so much that it tries to make its long letters into its short letters. For example, if you remember, that ū is the oo from boot while Lithuanian u is the u from put.
So the future form for "he" thinks: if I’m going for shortness anyway, why not just shorten that ū to u altogether? And that’s what it does.
So, can you guess what he will be is:
Remember the emphasis and say:
No emphasis needed in this sentence. Say.
So, you just remember that the future form for he likes to be short and it goes for shortness at all costs. Even if it means kicking off the little thing of the top of the letter ū…
Alright, I think we are almost good with the future. We are going to have some more practice with the future before we can move to the past.