I’ve watched this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQBSbQnZNrY) about a Japanese dude interviewing a Taiwanese woman, in which at one point he asked her if Japanese is easy for Mandarin speakers to learn Japanese (language), she said it’s still difficult due to the differences in grammar between Mandarin and Japanese, despite them using the same characters or some words appearing the same, there are still false friends between both languages though.

In hindsight:

* Are there differences between Latvian and Lithuanian grammar?
* Even though you recognize that word from Latvian, but has a different meaning in Lithuanian, does it get confusing at first due to being false friends?

by Animemann90

2 comments

  1. It is probably the simplest language out there for us to learn, but would still require some effort. I haven’t actually tried properly learning Lithuanian, so this is just anecdotal evidence from someone who has tried to translate some lyrics of my favourite Lithuanian musicians and has interacted with some Lithuanian friends.
    1. The grammar seems quite similar. A couple of differences but not major. Britannica has a very elaborate explanation: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baltic-languages/Comparison-of-Lithuanian-and-Latvian#:~:text=Standard%20Lithuanian%20has%20five%20declensions,the%20two%20languages%20is%20different.
    2. There are definitely some funny ones I have discovered, e.g. “spalva” in Lithuanian means “Color” but Latvian means human or animal body hair. “Miestas” for Lithuanians is a city, but for us an almost derogatory term for a small town. “Daiktas” in Lithuanian means a “thing” (apparently), but for Latvians it’s almost always a penis. The most confusing one is probably that “ir” in Latvian means “is” but “and” in Lithuanian.
    A lot you can deduce once you understand a bit more how the other language works, but I do remember reading that the vocabulary overlaps between LV and LT are fewer than for instance between Germans and Dutch, meaning we would probably have to learn quite a lot of words that are not the same.

  2. Ahhh here we go. So Lithaunians have Samagotian dialect, which is literally drunk Lithaunian speaking Latvian. Samagotian is very easy for Latvian, as it is literall Latvian mixup. But Lithaunian language is hard for Latvian. For Lithaunians learning Latvian is very easy, i would say too easy (this comes from Lithaunian friends)

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