Latvian vs Lithuanian | Can they understand each other? | Episode 1

In this video, we explore similarities and differences between Lithuanian and Latvian, examining the factors that contribute to their mutual intelligibility. Through engaging language challenges, we aim to showcase the linguistic connections and enhance our understanding of these unique languages.
Latvian and Lithuanian are two remarkable Baltic languages with deep historical roots and unique linguistic features. Latvian is the official language of Latvia, spoken by the majority of the population, while Lithuanian holds the distinction of being one of the oldest Indo-European languages still in use today. Both languages have retained archaic elements from their ancient origins, making them fascinating subjects of linguistic study.
Mutual intelligibility refers to the ability of speakers of closely related languages to understand each other to varying degrees without prior knowledge or extensive exposure.
Although Latvian and Lithuanian share some similarities due to their shared ancestry, they are separate languages with their own distinct grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. While speakers of one language may recognize certain words in the other, the mutual intelligibility between them is limited, hindering effortless communication.
Despite their linguistic differences, Latvian and Lithuanian foster a sense of cultural solidarity in the Baltic region, showcasing the diversity and richness of language within the European continent.
🤗 Big Thanks to Mihails and Marius for making this video possible!
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🤗 Big hug for everyone reading my video descriptions! You rock! 🤓💪🏻
#languagechallenge #latvia #lithuania

[@AmidaTong]

My Lithuanian tutor has a wonderful metaphor for how Latvian sounds: it's like a conversation you're eavesdropping on and you keep leaning towards it - closer and closer, and you're just about to start understanding what they are saying, but you never can!

[@AK-qy5iw]

Latvian sounds to me as if they are complaining.

[@ytfeh]

Much similar for Finnish and Estonian.

[@user-dw3sn5ck6m]

Я не плохо понимаю литовцев зная русский и латышский,чушь

[@user-dw3sn5ck6m]

​@@ytfehвообще не похожи,совершенно разные языки

[@AK-qy5iw]

@@user-dw3sn5ck6m Pravda? Kakoi jazyk iz nih blize russkomu?

[@takforalt]

I am so happy to hear my Lithuanian mother tongue being spoken. Thank you, Norbert.

[@krystynaiwanicka666]

My mom also Lithuanian, but she don't know Lithuanian at all)

[@takforalt]

@@krystynaiwanicka666, perhaps you can learn some and inspire your mother to learn as well.

[@bittermorschannel9742]

Tongue!?

[@Patryk392]

@@bittermorschannel9742 he/she means language.

[@takforalt]

@@Patryk392 Yes, as in he speaks many tongues. Cognate of lingua as in lingua franca.

[@indrajukame]

Not dissing Mihails but he is originally Russian speaker, so all the Latvians will hear the accent and some slightly different word choices than a really native Latvian would make. 😊 I also think that he made the sentences unnecessarily complicated. He seems to be a linguist and that's why making the sentences harder as actually people would explain things. But for an obviously Russian speaker he's really good at Latvian!! I wish my Russian was so fluent!

[@user-cb6xc3rj1i]

He is f*** Russian. We Latvians - don't speak like Michael are using our language!

[@caukakau123]

Krievs

[@Kannaxx]

Mihails sentences weren't complicated but they were a bit wrong grammatically.

[@Waress69420]

okupants ble

[@andrisgailitis]

Exactly what I was thinking, some sentences/words were not exactly correct. And as native Latvian, I picked up the Lithuanian parts faster than he did.

[@tanevaaru2418]

How the two languages can be that similar and that different at the same time... Incredible

[@tanevaaru2418]

Also i like how relic lithuanian sounds lol. I can feel prehistoric vibes of it xd

[@peterfireflylund]

Yes. They looked and sounded the same to me and I was shocked every time the other guy didn't understand everything. The Latvian guy sounded more Slavic to me -- specifically more Russian -- but as if they were speaking the same language with different accents.

[@piggyraccoon5464]

The Latvian guy is not pure Latvian by his ancestry

[@ManteIIo]

@@peterfireflylund Latvian dude spoke with slight Russian accent

[@ManteIIo]

@@tanevaaru2418 The scholarly consensus is that Lithuanian is the language that has retained most of the features of the Protolanguage, i.e. it is characterised by a very ancient linguistic structure: declensions (of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns), short and long vowels, diphthongs, etc.

[@surroundgatari]

I love the Baltic languages and the Baltic people as a whole (Estonians are lovely too!), Your cultures have been under threat for so long but all Latvians and Lithuanians have persevered and kept their societies free, strong and expressive through it all. Whenever I've met one of you in my country they've been unforgettable people. Top regards from across the sea in Sweden

[@giedrestankeviciene34]

Tack! 🇱🇹

[@gutukasstitch]

Thanks a lot, it is lovely to hear.

[@towarzyszbolo3677]

nice

[@PrototypeZZ]

Yeah, but Estonian is rather Finnish (or otherwise) And Latvian is similar to Lithuanian.

[@georgyryzhakov6884]

Извините, но эстонцы не балтийцы ,а финно-- угры !

[@vytautasstasiulionis8376]

Lai dzīvo latviešu brāļi! LV 🇱🇻 - 🇱🇹 LT Tegyvuoja broliai latviai! Szacunek dla Polski! PL 🇵🇱 - 🇱🇹 LT Pagarba Lenkijai!

[@SugarCube2003]

As a Latgalian I was picking up more from the Lithuanian than I expected honestly, but I think it might be because it has a few more similarities with Lithuanian than latvian has with Lithuanian. But loved the video. Not often you find videos with the baltic languages!!!

[@Vithimerius]

It would be interesting to compare Latgalian with Samogitian

[@SugarCube2003]

@@Vithimerius yes I agree. It would be very fascinating

[@JohnTTM]

Nu beidz, latgaļu valoda ir tikai un vienīgi latviešu valodas dialekts. Līdzības latgaļu valodai ar lietuviešu ir ļoti minimālas.

[@mildapupsyte]

@@Vithimeriusit would be! Most Lithuanians struggle to understand true samogitian 😅

[@arnasudovic8383]

@@Vithimerius Kažkumet megėnuom so vīrās ėš Latgalas pasėruokoutė. Kāp ėr ējė konteksta soprastė, ale tas nabova lėngvē

[@davydko1507]

As a Ukrainian, I thought Lithuanian and Latvian were much more similar than I understood from watching the video. The Baltics is my love🇺🇦❤️🇱🇹🇱🇻

[@yashulja]

​@@blokflotnbrassу складі України

[@Mediaflashmob]

Lithuanian and Latvian are further from each other than Ukrainian and Russian.

[@davydko1507]

@@blokflotnbrass You hurt me a lot🤣

[@HeroManNick132]

@@blokflotnbrass Z troll for sure

[@bordergore1395]

Слава Україні і піздець російські федерації

[@modestasgendvilas4779]

huge respect to our Latvian broliukai :) best wishes from Lithuania !!! Norbi thanks for great content :)

[@myrainbowhoneycom]

Well... they f*ed up cuz he seemed to be russian... 🤣

[@litltu2061]

Lai dzīvo Latvija un brāļi latvieši! Sveiciens no Lietuvas !

[@piggyraccoon5464]

Sveicieni no saulainās Dobeles!

[@milzismelnais5729]

U too bro ❤

[@ben-taobeneton3945]

@@piggyraccoon5464Vai tad jūs tur neaizpūta? 😀

[@vladimirpopov4043]

Piekrtīu uz visiem100%

[@BeanBag_shorts]

BRĀĻIIIIIIIIII UZ MŪŽUUUUUUUUUUUUUHDHDHDHFB

[@janesoren4079]

Both languages are so beautiful ❤

[@KSfreaky]

geras, kaip patiko žiūrėti, tiek latvių tiek lietuvių kalbos labai gražios.

[@dariuso6190]

As a Lithuanian, Latvian is understandable to me, only similar words in Latvian can have different meanings than in Lithuanian. The words are very similar, but the meaning of the words can be different

[@justinjj1259]

best example: elnias = briedis and briedis = alnis

[@antrakirsone2992]

@@justinjj1259 😅👍 Tas ir labākais atšķirībās starp baltu tautām.

[@SantaSmiles]

As a Latvian I have no idea what you guys are saying at all. If there was a text of 500 words, I would literally get like 10.

[@xtripx4273]

Latvian here. Approve suthors comment ❤

[@AnitaRuza]

Beidz, viss tak ir daudz maz saprotams, vismaz nojausma par tēmu.@@SantaSmiles

[@Gameboygenius]

I would like to see an episode with Finnish and Estonian mutual intelligibility as well.

[@papazataklaattiranimam]

They are like Latvian and Lithuanian too

[@Ecolinguist]

We have already made a Finnish Estonian episode on this channel. :)

[@jevgenijskaktins1066]

@@Ecolinguist Estonian vs Latvian would be fun as well, not too far as it seems but one has to tune up a little ;) mutually unintelligible and though seem to understand each other for centuries

[@sonjamikaela1277]

@@jevgenijskaktins1066 lol those languages are completely unintelligible so it would be pointless. kind of like english vs chinese

[@martinkoitmae6655]

He already made a video about Estonian and Finnish!

[@johnsun3854]

As I understand it is easy to learn the other language if you already know one. It would be awesome if Latvians and Lithuanians started to learn each others language. 🇱🇻 ❤🇱🇹

[@lizberezin2919]

Everybody already knows one :) So everybody can learn more.

[@justasbudreckas8460]

Basicly 50 km form the border everyone can somehow comunicate with a mix of english lithuanian latvian and russian but some how i know a lot more latvians that know lithuanian thain lithuanians latwian i only know a couple of latvian words like thank you (paldiez)(ačiū) or fish (ziviz)(žuvis)

[@iclicklike3397]

no reason other than just for the sake of it. Can communicate with each other in english or russian. Or if you move from one country to another.

[@sandrios]

Finally having my native language (Latvian). Feels so weird, and I feel like I have to say this, but Mihails has non native accent, but is still good, just long vowels are often too short and stress sometimes isn't on the first vowel.

[@KumoCC]

Yes, and also he clearly, from being interested in languages, has a better ear for Lithuanian than most! :D

[@KumoCC]

Actually, do you think Mihails might just have a (heavy-ish) Latgalian accent? I can't seem to ever tell apart that accent from a native slavic-language-speaker's one

[@CobraRedstone]

@@KumoCC He's probably done some research on it. Before studying proto-Baltic my understanding of Lithuanian was much cruder than it is now, but at this stage my comprehension of Lithuanian was about the same as his, despite me never having researched Lithuanian properly.

[@sandrios]

@@KumoCC He definitely doesn't have Latgalian accent, as from my experience Latgalian accent goes very pronounced on diphthongs where as his where flat. Latgalians usually even add them where they wouldn't be in standard Latvian. Of course, when I say Latgalian, I don't just mean somebody from the region, but someone who actually speaks Latgalian, as there are many regions in Latgale like Daugavpils where majority choses to speak Russian, so they would have Russian accent and not Latgalian, even If they speak Latvian. And that's just my opinion based on handful of people I know from deep Latgale, and Russians I have encountered in my life living in Rīga

[@lkrnpk]

I am Latgalian, no, as his name suggests, Mihails = Mikhail in Russian, it is a typical Eastern Slavic accent of sb whose mother tongue is probably Russian

[@vittoriuz]

These languages are so soft. So pleasant to hear. Thanks, Norbert and interviewees.

[@spaceowel363]

probably has to do with diphthongs, the "au", "ai" "eu" and "uo" sounds

[@Markov092]

@@ivanhoewindsor4749 Because both languages historically developed different phonology. Lithuanian is more conservative, that kept Baltic-Slavic softer sounding phonetics, while Latvian, being influenced by Germanic sounds, is more rough sounding.

[@vidmantasb5993]

@@Markov092 Latvian is much more influenced by Finnic languages like Estonian and Livonian than it is by German

[@johnsun3854]

We are the elves bro.

[@Markov092]

@@vidmantasb5993 Phonetics are clearly German, coming from long Deutschbalten rule. Things like hard vowels and many archaic words that come from Lower German, that are still used time to time in Kurzemē. Finnic influence is undeniable but mostly because of ancient areal contact and proximity like in very Northern parts of Latvia where local people tend to use more pronounced dialectic features. There are notable count of lexemes from Livonian but German I would say is larger.

[@lifeproofminds]

As a native Latvian it was surprisingly hard to understand Lithuanian. I played along during this video and I had the same experience as Mihails if not worse - caught very few words that I understood but they were crucial ones. But it was also cool when suddenly there was a phrase or part of a sentence that sounded almost exactly like in Latvian but those were rare.

[@CobraRedstone]

The similarities are there, but you definitely need education to see them. For example: Jis and Viņš. Latvian Viņš is a contraction of an older "Vin-jis", a compound which I believe was used to denote a person is inside by using an old prefix "vin-". If you also know the other sound changes, it also becomes a bit easier to understand how a Lithuanian word would be formed in Latvian and vice-versa.

[@lifeproofminds]

@@CobraRedstone That's interesting because in Latgalian (Latvian dialect) "viņš" (he) is also "jis".

[@CobraRedstone]

@@lifeproofminds Es zinu, esmu Latvietis :P

[@jelenat.3507]

I don't understand latvian (my lithuanian))), just maybe written more

[@manometras]

@@CobraRedstone, the Latvian vin,š has more to do with that Ukrainian vin, not the Lithuanian jis.

[@juusiperkele8547]

If not Germans and Russians the Old Prussian speaker could join these 2 gentlemen

[@ManteIIo]

I believe Russians had no impact on Old Prussian languages/tribes when they were constantly raided and eradicated by Crusaders. When Kaliningrad came into possession of Russians, there was not a single trace left of it's ex-Baltic dwellers.

[@Lachausis]

​@@ManteIIothey were left tgere, only completely assimilated. Russians killed and raped the whomever didn't flee.

[@SB-fw3yr]

Lol. What does Russia have to do with the extinction of the Prussian language?

[@compatriot852]

​@@ManteIIoPrussian Lithuanians still existed in Prussia and made up a notable portion of the population. They were the direct descendants of Old Prussians all be it heavily germanized and Lutheran

[@inaravikstrema8420]

Baltu valodas bija trīs prūšu, latviešu un lietuviešu. Tagad tikai latviešu un lietuviešu valoads.

[@---fh6em]

I am from Latvia and I used to work with Lithuanians for some time. I can confirm we don't understand each others language at all, maybe some 20% of words that have same meaning. More that that, we don't understand each others habits in terms of eating cold beetroot soup - we eat it with dark bread, they eat it with potatoes. It's amazing how close and similar our countries are yet so different and so many things actually cause culture shock for each one of us.

[@megamorphozis]

Aš studijuoju lietuvių kalbą ir buvo labai įdomu paklausyti ir Mikhails ir Mariaus :)

[@efectovogel8295]

Yesss I’ve been waiting ages for this!! Mano mėgstamiausios kalbos, mīlestība iz Spānijas! 🇪🇸❤️🇱🇹🇱🇻

[@waluigi5848]

I can't speak a word of either language, but watching them interact and understand each other is fascinating.

[@skirmantasstankevicius458]

As Lithuanian, I say this is just beautiful to see how braliukas is trying to nail our language. Yeah, both are Baltic group languages, similar yet different. While watching this video, I only understood small part of what braliukas said. Maybe it was more easier with his last example (hotel), cos there were more common words to pick up and know what he is talking about, but the previous one was rather difficult.

[@bagawbokup]

This braliukas sounds like Russian.

[@Ignash]

He called himself Latvian and he knows Latvian, sounds like braliukas to me.

[@ronrocker7131]

@@Ignash He is a russian dude from Latvia, that, from what it looks like, loves, and is loyal to Latvia. Not to get too much into politics, but usually, the russians, who feed on kremlin propaganda, neglect learning latvian and have mediocre knowledge of it, at best. Usually. There are some exceptions. Like the latin professor at the university I go to. A well educated man. But thoroughly poisoned by soviet thinking.

[@Ignash]

@@ronrocker7131 Latvia and Lithuania is not about ethnicity, it is about learning language, respecting history, law, etc. This is what makes you Latvian or Lithuanian, doesn't matter where are you born.

[@myrainbowhoneycom]

Well... they f*ed up cuz he seemed to be russian... 🤣

[@hateva_on_bass]

I love the baltic languages, so beautiful! Super interesting to hear them side by side.

[@mariomm9080]

Basically its a mix of scandinavian and slavic languages ,Lithuanian has more of polish vibe with those sh ch sounds

[@Arissef]

@@mariomm9080 sh ch are abundant in English and Japanese too. But you wouldn't say they sound Slavic.

[@piggyraccoon5464]

I like that Lithuanian language uses a lot of old words that are not normally used in Latvian

[@ManteIIo]

The reason for this is that Latvian culture was butchered and mutilated over the course of 800 years due to conquests by many different powers - Germans, Swedes, Russians and then they have had also big influx of Finno-ugric speakers from the north which led to many loanwords that are used today. Unfortunately unlike many Lithuanian tribes who managed to unite themselves against the common enemy and successfully stand against and fend invaders - Latvian tribes were unable to do that which led to disaster and nearly full assimilation as has happened with many other smaller tribes that were wiped out of the maps. Because of this dark history, their language has undergone major shift with implementing multitude different changes and especially introduction of vast amount of foreign loan words.

[@ManteIIo]

Speaking of old words, I can tell you even more. Lithuanian and Latvian has became so distinct to each other, that I probably would understand more Sanskrit and Hindi at this point than Latvian. The scholarly consensus is that Lithuanian is the language that has retained most of the features of the Protolanguage, i.e. it is characterised by a very ancient linguistic structure: declensions (of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns), short and long vowels, diphthongs, etc. Traditional Lithuanian houses are often adorned with a horse motif. The twin horse heads are known as ‘Ašvieniai’. In Lithuanian mythology, the Ašvieniai are divine twins portrayed as pulling the carriage of the sun god (Saule) through the sky. That their name sounds uncannily familiar to Indians is on account of the fact that the term and other details pertaining to their portrayal are akin to the Ashwin twins of Indian mythology. In fact, the Lithuanian word for horse, from which Ašvieniai is derived - ‘ašva’ - is almost the same as the Sanskrit one: ‘áśva’ • अश्व (horse, stallion) and that’s not all. Many Lithuanian words have more than a passing resemblance to Sanskrit ones. Lithuanians wish profit and wealth to others and say ‘labas’, similar to the Sanskrit ‘labh’ • लभ् which means to gain, possess - comparable to Lithuanian lõbis (treasure, wealth). Dievas (Lithuanian) meaning ‘god’ is similar to devá • देव (Sanskrit) Ugnis (Lithuanian) meaning ‘fire’ is similar to agní • अग्नि (Sanskrit) Dantis (Lithuanian) meaning ‘teeth’ is similar to dánta • दन्त (Sanskrit) Dumas (Lithuanian) meaning ‘smoke’ is similar to dhūmá • धूम (Sanskrit) Sapnas (Lithuanian) meaning ‘dream’ is similar to svápna • स्वप्न (Sanskrit) Akis (Lithuanian) meaning ‘eye’ is similar to ákṣi • अक्षि (Sanskrit) Avis (Lithuanian) meaning ‘sheep’ is similar to ávi • अवि (Sanskrit) Diena (Lithuanian) meaning ‘day’ is similar to dína • दिन (Sanskrit) Sūnus (Lithuanian) meaning ‘son’ is similar to sūnú • सूनु (Sanskrit) Medus (Lithuanian) meaning ‘honey’ is similar to mádhu • मधु (Sanskrit) Ūdra (Lithuanian) meaning ‘otter’ is similar to udrá • उद्र (Sanskrit) Naujas (Lithuanian) meaning ‘new’ is similar to náva • नव (Sanskrit) Vyras (Lithuanian) meaning ‘man’ is similar to vīrá • वीर (Sanskrit) Vilkas (Lithuanian) meaning ‘wolf’ is similar to vṛ́ka • वृक (Sanskrit) Darna (Lithuanian) meaning ‘harmony’ is similar to dhárma • धर्म (Sanskrit) This is only a few examples of hundreds similar words and I'm more than certain that Latvians would also find a lot familiarity, Hindi language has even more words that are extinct in Sanskrit, but were copied into Hindi as foreign words and also almost identical to many Lithuanian words. An interesting example of this would be Hindi word 'kukurmutta' which means 'mushroom' and in Lithuanian kukurbezdalis/kukurdvelkis - 'puffball' mushroom. Now imagine how this suffix traveled thousands of km and survived for thousands of years.

[@CobraRedstone]

@@ManteIIo You're just making that up to account for what you can't explain, because you haven't bothered learning about Latvian. And to anyone who is reading this, don't take this guy seriously.

[@manometras]

@@ManteIIo, no, Latvian is much closer to Lithuanian than what Sanskrit is. And I doubt you know much of Sanskrit.

[@TedSCSI]

@@ManteIIo I can see many of those examples being obviously also root for Slavic languages (maybe not necc. how it's written but definitely how it sounds) ie. (fire) agni - Rus ogon', PL ogień, (smoke) dhuma - PL dym, (day) dina - PL dzień, (son) sunu - PL syn, I never thought that Sanskrit is still so recognisable in our modern languages.

[@JaKamille]

Wow, I’m learning Lithuanian now. It’s sooo cool 🥰 Norbert, thank you for this video! ❤

[@dannestrom]

In Swedish the drink is called mjöd, and it is made from honey (honung in Swedish). The Swedish word "mjöd" is also a cognate with the Polish word "miód", and the Latvian and Lithuanian words for honey.

[@osasunaitor]

In Spanish it's "miel", from Latin "melis", which in turn comes from ancient Greek "meli". This seems like a good example of an old Indo-European word still in use all around the continent

[@susanwestern6434]

The drink is called mead in English.

[@thinkpolish]

In Polish 'miód' mean both 'honey' and 'mead'. Btw, I found it so surprising that I could hardly understand any Lithuanian, apart from maybe the word for 'hands' and 'horns'. I remember reading articles about how Polish and Lithuanian have been related to and influencing each other due to their countries proximity and intertwined history and I couldn't find any traces of it in the spoken language. Written words ring more bells but without translation I'd be at a loss to understand them.

[@walterweiss7124]

German: Met, Honig

[@ralepej]

In Finnish we use nowadays word "hunaja" which is from Swedish, but old word is "mesi" and is also used rarely and which is same as in Estonian.

[@nicknickbon22]

Even though I’m Italian I definitely understood when the Lithuanian guy said eda when talking about the stork, since in Latin edere means to eat. It shows how much Baltic language are conservative in the terms they used.

[@alexscofield1002]

Eda it's a russian word

[@georgesherozia6072]

​@@alexscofield1002as much russian, as much latin i think)

[@Slezyy]

Latin has many words decedent from Greek/old Helios with has Sanskrit roots, so as lithuanian has most Sanskrit old words and proto slavic, so it's make sense this language still has core words with similar pronounsiation, roots

[@nicknickbon22]

@@alexscofield1002 ed- prefix is literally present in every Indo-European language (edere,essen, eat,…)

[@alexscofield1002]

@@nicknickbon22 its interesting. I didn't know that earlier

[@weaseled4118]

In my experience as a lithuanian learner (native english) I can understand very little latvian when spoken, but when its written its a lot easier

[@vadimcitinuk9175]

It was a very interesting conversation for me. I live near the southern Latvian border, I used to go to Lithuania weekly because it is really close. And I am a Russian native speaker. I do speak Latvian as my second language, and I always was extremely interested in how Latvian native speakers understand Lithuanian, because I can't see it from my personal experience. I was wondering if it's the same as I understand Belarusian or Ukrainian languages. But now I see that Latvian and Lithuanian are even more different. It is weird, because the peoples of both countries live so close to each other. Anyway, great conversation!

[@Lazurnyj]

All three Baltic states complain usually that they don’t understand each other. Three small states, three different languages. Something very bizarre in today’s global world

[@ralepej]

@@Lazurnyj Estonia is really different due its language is from another language group. But here have been Livonian languege between them which is also Finno-Ugric language but there is lot influence from Latvian. And especially nowadays when they have wanted to wake up that language.

[@manometras]

@@Lazurnyj, there’s nothing strange in that, but you are Russian, so you tend to tell everyone that they should drop their own language and take yours instead. 😂 But no, the Baltic people are taking English instead. The Lithuanian and Latvian languages split (became significantly different) from 5th to 7th century. Latvians got a strong influence from Finno-ugric people.

[@volks4551]

If you think Mihails is ''Latvian native speaker'' you`ve got problems.

[@andriso9346]

It is not that they are very different. I am native Latvian speaker and I do understand some Lithuanian - especially in context. It is hard mutualy, but it gets easier when you see written Lithuanian. I guess the biggest difference is that for Latvians the Lithuanian is a bit more softer sounding. Also Lithuanian words in many cases use similar words Latvians used but no longer use - eg. 'laikrožius' which is simmilar to Latvian 'laikrādis' which in English would directly translate as 'something that shows time'. Were in Latvian we commonly use 'pulkstenis' while the older version would still make sense.. and there are many more like that

[@IX8B]

All respect to the Latvian with the very atypical name Mihails - he knows the language quite well, yet speaks with an accent, creating a slightly different sound of the language.

[@piggyraccoon5464]

nu viņš, acīmredzot, ir aktīvāks valodās nekā dažs labs tādēļ arī ieguva iespēju mūs pārstāvēt

[@antrakirsone2992]

I think he isn't native Latvian, only Latvian speaking, or born in mixed family with native Russian or Belorussian language

[@sambrown5172]

@@antrakirsone2992 also noticed his "lazy"pronunciation - sounds like Russian speaker.

[@balagans]

@@antrakirsone2992 in Latvia we have plenty dialects. Wery possible he have some acent from hes dialect.

[@antrakirsone2992]

@@balagans Name one of plenty dialects he might use!

[@artursupelnieks9447]

I'm native Latvian speaker, and I understood nearly everything in Lithuanian.

[@ugnikalnis]

Just use Latgalian as middle language and a bit of imagination

[@braziliaan]

I loved this episode. Very interesting! Please make a part 2!

[@ggb3147]

It was pretty interesting lesson. What I find especcialy surprising is that, even I don't know any of Latvian od Lithuanian, I could less or more easily recognise words that have very similar sound to other IE linguistic groups: germanic, slavic, romance. Nice.

[@Rasytojas1980]

Latvia was ruled by baltic germans and later russians They left their mark

[@ikbintom]

The word mead is also cognate to medus and miód, and they all come from Proto-Indo-European *médhu, which could refer to both honey and honey wine :D Unlike hotels, honey bees were already around at the time of the Proto-Indo-Europeans ;)

[@peterfireflylund]

And, possibly, the Tocharians taught bee keeping to the Chinese. The Chinese word 蜜 (mì) means honey.

[@ManteIIo]

Yes, indeed. Medus (Lithuanian) meaning ‘honey’ is similar to mádhu • मधु (Sanskrit) and even got its way to the Chinese language as stated by previous comment.

[@crocolagerfelden6142]

I think we Lithuanians oftentimes overestimate our ability to understand our Latvian friends. That funny video with a faux Latvian Eurovision commentator comes to mind. Most Lithuanian viewers thought they could understand Latvian when in fact it was an impression of how Latvian sounds to Lithuanians.

[@kristapsravics6888]

I need to know what video are you referring to :D

[@kerstas10]

@@kristapsravics6888 "vertimo nereikia- latvijos eurovizijos komentatorius pratruko". 😂 And yes, loooads of kids/younger people thought its latvian 😂😂

[@lkrnpk]

I actually had the same idea some time ago, what if I would make a video reading a text in Lithuanian in a way how Latvians would pronounce it, with Latvian stresses etc. and if Latvians would understand it better than standard Lithuanian

[@artursmihelsons415]

For first challenge, even my guess was "nags" and I'm native latvian.. 😂 Great show! Thanks to all participants! Greetings to Lithuania from Latvia! ❤

[@ines_uk]

I’m Latvian and have a good friend who’s Lithuanian here in the UK. We cannot communicate in each other’s language but when we can’t find and English word to use, we almost always find that the word is very similar in our languages. So it’s easy to understand separate words but not when used in sentences.

[@SaturnineXTS]

It was nice to hear an example of how Latvian has stress on the 1st syllable most of the time (or all the time), while in Lithuanian the stress is free. It was really well illustrated in these conversations. There are also some pretty predictable sound correspondences, such as "dz" in Latvian usually matching with "g" in Lithuanian etc. Other than that, I couldn't tell much, except that both languages feel strikingly Slavic at some times - both because of cognates and word inflections - but almost Italic or Germanic at other times as well. Everyone says they're both rather conservative languages in relation to Proto-Indo-European, especially Lithuanian, which is also an interesting thing.

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

Gėrimas - dzerims?

[@SaturnineXTS]

@@jurgasbielinis2130yeah, exactly. or gyvūnas - dzīvnieks

[@kostiamarich]

Thank you. This is really awesome. As a Slavic speaker, I've been waiting for a Baltic video on this channel for a long time. Baltic languages have a lot of evident lexical similarities with Slavic languages and it's quite interesting to observe.

[@NEO-jb7bb]

For me the difference between Latvian and Lithuanian has always been something similar to the difference between English and Dutch.

[@thomasegbers8191]

As a Dutch person I spoke English before they actually taught me at school. I learned from television. But my girlfriend is Lithuanian and I don't speak it, I do understand some words, and it's fun to some similarities, but my guess is that it is harder for Lithuanian/Latvian to understand each other than for Dutch/English😊

[@NEO-jb7bb]

@@thomasegbers8191 Maybe you're right, it's pretty subjective on my end. For me the impression I've had of Dutch has always been that I understand it about as much as an English speaker as I understand Lithuanian as a Latvian speaker. However, I've travelled to Lithuania and interacted with the language more so actually I find it much easier to understand than most people seem to claim, someone just have to hear the changes like Latvian "c" will often turn in Lithuanian "k" (ceļš > kelias) "dz" into "g" (dzeltens > geltonas), "o" or other diphthong into "an" or something similar (roka>ranka) and have to maybe have an imagination with some words because what sounds like long means tall and what sounds like drag means push.

[@thomasegbers8191]

@@NEO-jb7bb I think you are right. Maybe we're just talented with languages which makes it easier😋

[@gorochovskis]

As a Lithuanian speaker, I must admit it was pretty easy to guess both Latvian words without further explanations. In general, being in Latvia is funny to understand at least half of written texts (sometimes the wording is like old or outdated Lithuanian ones)

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

Interestingly, Latvians say exactly the same about archaic words in Lithuanian 😅

[@mveidemanis]

@@jurgasbielinis2130 That is also my point of view. What does this word mean? Ah, this is an old form of this word which we don't use anymore

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

@@mveidemanis in Lithuanian such words would be something our grandparents would have used, but we never did. A lot of those are of polish origin. Also in the 90s we cleaned up from a lot of russian barbarisms, but today we again have a lot of those only from English - it is quite bad

[@valdiskazaks4709]

I am a latgalian and used to share a flat back in a day with a lithuanian. When I spoke latvian and he lithuanian, it was really hard time to understand each other. It was a different story though when I spoke latgalian and he zhemaitian. We could understand each other way better this way, which I find suprising since latgalian is spoken in the east of Latvia and zhemaitian in the west of Lithuania.

[@Name-og4th]

No wonder. Lithuanian is a dialect of Samogitian mixed with Slavic.

[@LukasSRR]

@@Name-og4thdont talk nonsence. You not lithuanian if you saying this. I would guess you’re belarussian full of propaganda that all lithuanians are samogitians

[@TheMagnusse]

@@Name-og4th Lithuanian is not a samogitian dialect - samogitian is a lithuanian dialect and this feature does not make belarussians lithuanians (no matter how hard you you spread this narrative)

[@Name-og4th]

@@TheMagnusse Why did lithuanians use the language sounding so close to Belarusian in law and state? Could be Lithuanians were Belarusians before they bought the german propaganda of the 19 century?

[@manometras]

Zhemaitian (Samogitian as it's written in Latin and English) is still Lithuanian, just has a few more features and words of Latvian than the standard Lithuanian has, and Latgalian is still Latvian, but has some features and words more similar to Lithuanian ones. The reason is more intense contacts with the neighbour nation, in both cases. Although Zhemaitians did not often contact with Latgalians. They both contacted with other dialects more often.

[@mykytka7133]

I'm Ukrainian and i watched it without subtitles. I understood only around 10% of what being said but it allowed me to make at least SOME guesses. Of course all of then were wrong. The last word was the closest guess for me, because i understood that it is sweet yellow product. But i said Banana😅

[@Apawcalypse_Meow]

As a Russian myself I couldn’t get anything related to a sweet yellow product. Didn’t expect that an Ukrainian could be able get that but that’s great you could! However, I was able to guess the third word (hotel) correctly. Thanks to the subtitles (not the English ones but these embedded into the video). I’ve recognised first cilveks as the people. Then noktis (sorry if I wrote the words incorrectly) as night. And what made me absolutely sure is that I’ve heard something about restaurants and gym (in Russian it sounds similar). I wondering, were you able to guess it as well?

[@ManteIIo]

@@Apawcalypse_Meow Naktis (Lithuanian) meaning ‘night’ is similar to nákti • नक्ति (Sanskrit). As a Russian speaker you'd able to understand quite a lot words in both Baltic languages due to shared distinct ancestry.

[@user-fu3pp8ol7i]

​@@Apawcalypse_Meow некоторые украинцы в комментах очень любят преувеличивать, что как они всё хорошо понимают и вообще они самые лучшие. Высокая самооценка это конечно хорошо, но у них это происходит через край конечно.

[@jeanivanjohnson]

​@@user-fu3pp8ol7i да мне кажется это черта всех восточноевропейских народов, либо слишком принижать себя, либо наоборот слишком себя завышать, я среди прибалтийских народов, балканских народов, поляков, русских, белорусов такое тоже замечаю

[@user-fu3pp8ol7i]

@@jeanivanjohnson это называется комплексом неполноценности. От этой черты нужно избавляться. В жизни эти "комплексы" точно не пригодятся.

[@PolosLatinos]

As I started speaking Lithuanian throughout my 10 years in Vilnius, I also started understanding Latvian when then Latvians don't speak fast. What makes it most difficult is: Latvian syllable accentuation is basically always the same (contrary to Lithuanian). Additionally, "g" becomes "dz" in Latvian (gėrimas, gintaras --》 dzēriens, dzintars)

[@carlinberg]

This was really fun watching! Really good mix of confusion, difficulties, but still good questions and answers and understanding! P.S. Medus est servus improbus!

[@antons5302]

Baltic languages sound lovely. My mom was born and spent some of her childhood in Vilnius and my grandparents used to be fluent in Lithuanian. Grandpa can still speak the language. They remember those days fondly and have a lot of love and respect for Lithuanian people. Baltic countries have a special place in my heart, and I want to one day learn Lithuanian too. Greetings from Ukraine 🇺🇦❤🇱🇹🇱🇻

[@Danuary]

this was the most entertaining video I've seen on youtube this week! And you can learn a lot too. Please make fore of these! And. esp. Lithuanian vs Latvian, I'm interested in these languages both.

[@FeedsNoSliesMusic]

I speak neither Latvian nor Lithuanian but I notice a number of similarities in vocabulary with Germanic and Romance languages. I suppose they say Lithuanian is the most similar living language to Proto-Indo-European so that's no real surprise.

[@FeedsNoSliesMusic]

Well, I went to Riga for a few days some years ago and picked up a few basic phrases, and was told by the woman working at the hostel that I should say "smuks biceps" to all the women, so I did of course. The other one said I should say "smuki pupi" but I looked at her suspiciously, saying "that means nice tits, doesn't it?" and she said it does, so I didn't say that to anyone. I also learnt how to pronounce the name of a local beer, which was long but I can't remember it at all now. Apart from that, no Latvian or Lithuanian.

[@piggyraccoon5464]

Ļoti interesants valodu salīdzinājums! Vēl lūdzu!

[@markskise]

Latvija un Lietuva, Lietuva ir Latvija 🇱🇻❤️🇱🇹. Un tuvējā nākotnē arī Karalauči 💪💪💪

[@1MuchButteR1]

😂. Maybe not bad idea though, Latvians actually have political nationalism. Might as well make a bigger country run from Riga

[@bagalur09]

Моя мама на литовском хорошо говорит. Мои родственники часть жизни прожили в Утене. Красивый язык.

[@times4937]

На мой взгляд, латышский звучит приятнее, немного похож на хорватский или словенский, а литовский звучит странно, как албанский, не хочу сказать, что албанский похож на литовский, просто они звучат специфично

[@fidenemini111]

​@@times4937Da, fonologija albanskogo i litovskogo, kak i sistema udarenija pohozhi. No vot litovskij i latyshskij oba pich accent jazyki, a vot albanskij - net.

[@airisfinglas2628]

​@@times4937ошибаетесь.Латышский язык это тот самый как и литовский язык,только он получил много влияние с немецкого языка и от части русского.Если это убрать от латышского,то он был бы как и литовский.Литовский не имел влияние немецкого языка и очень мало имел влияние польского.Потому литовский звучит так как и был 5500 лет назат,так говорили индоевропейцы.

[@jeanivanjohnson]

​​​​​@@airisfinglas2628 как я понял речь была именно о схожести в произношении звуков, а не о том кто от кого произошёл и кто на кого повлиял. а в латышском по идее ещё финноугорское влияние должно присутствовать т.к. на севере латвии раньше жили ливы. а насчёт того что литовский такой же как 5500 лет назад, это преувелечение, да он действииельно очень архаичен но всё равно менялся как и все остальные языки. плюс мы не можем на 100% знать как звучал прото-индоевропейский ибо ни письменности, ни, очевидно, аудиозаписей на нём никогда не существовало, мы лишь можем его реконструировать на основе языков которые из него развились.

[@airisfinglas2628]

@@jeanivanjohnson открой словарь литовского,санскрита,славянских языков и сравни.Литовский самыйпохожий и сотни слов вообще идентичные. Avis(санскр)-овца-avis(лит) Dantas-зуб-dantis Agnis-огонь-ugnis Deivas-бог-dievas Ezers- озеро-ezeras Douna-хлеб-duona Akis-глаз-akis Dukhita- дочь-dukra Bhalis- брат-brolis Как видишь,не толькo окончание is и ас идентичные,но и сами слова.Не зря мировые лингвисты кто изучает санскрит учатся литовского языка.Только с помощью литовского можно воссосдать звучание санскрита.Совпадает формы языков и фонетика.Латышский тоже похожь на санскрит,но уже меньше.Латыши как и славяне потеряли окончание is,as,us.

[@mildapupsyte]

I have been waiting for this video for sooo long ❤ aciu!

[@Slievas]

This video put a smile on my face😊thank you, guys!

[@Twittler1]

I was struck by the word ‘gandras’ (?) for bird. In English, a male goose is called a ‘gander’! I think these two languages are just a stage or two beyond being major dialects of the original Baltic tongue.

[@ManteIIo]

Yes, indeed. There are many words that have a common root from which an approximate meaning can be inferred, but in many cases the meaning has distantly shifted. The linguistical term for this phenomen is "false friends". _from Middle English gandre, from Old English gandra, ganra (“gander”), from Proto-West Germanic *ganʀō, from Proto-Germanic *ganzô (“gander”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰh₂éns (“goose”)._ Also in Scots: ganare, ganer, ganner, Old Irish: ganndal, Irish: gandal

[@internetual7350]

@@ManteIIo What's with all the strange small letters and the tiny 2 in the PIE word?

[@F_A_F123]

@@internetual7350 there are h1, h2 and h3, and they're the sounds that were reconstructed but we don't know how they sound exactly

[@internetual7350]

@@F_A_F123 Ahhhhhhhhh.

[@AnitaRuza]

its the latvian word "gandrs" for a black stork (specie)

[@arnasudovic8383]

Hey, thanks for this. I enjoy the conversation. You need to add Latgalian and Samogitian persons, too

[@takijeden8481]

Bardzo ciekawy odcinek! :D Zabieram się od oglądania!

[@lasma.a]

This was great! Make more of these ❤

[@hoangkimviet8545]

As far as I know, Baltic languages still keep many features of the Proto-Indo-European language. When thinking about the distribution of these languages, I feel quite surprised because the Baltic region has been the place of numerous interactions. I wonder how they can keep aforementioned features in this situation.

[@rembo96]

Well actually they used to live kind of isolated compared to other European nations.

[@juandiegovalverde1982]

Just Lithuanian.

[@jonaskazlauskas5117]

There was one of biggest region of swamps in Europe.

[@povilzem]

Innate stubbornness and evidence-based xenophobia, mostly.

[@MostIntelligentMan]

we fought off all attackers, lithuania kept freedom very long, by the time russian hordes came we had too strong of identity to be broken and they tried, i think by being so disgusting and subhuman they made sticking to your own even more appealing unlike for example irish or scottish that were treated mich better by english invaders and so lost their languages pretty much

[@szendrenko]

Great way to deeply understand the level of mutual intelligibility between these two amazing languages!

[@olgad5928]

Thanks for a fun video! As Latvian speaker it was very hard to understand Lithuanian just from sound, subtitles made it a bit easier, though I only got one of the words in the end.

[@karoliskevalas752]

Similarities between Latvian language and Lithuanian are funny, and it's worth to note that when Lithuanians go to Latvia, they think, they can naturally speak Latvian language🙂 for me it feels like I do uderstand a bit of Latvian, but most likely I do not😀 how ever, Latvians are our most loved neighbours🙂

[@VeryClearLanguages]

A really great video! Fortunately both such rich languages survived to the present day, which Western Baltic languages like Old Prussian could not achieve.

[@oscwavcommentaccount]

would be interesting to see if a modern prussian speaker (preferably one who doesn't know any other baltic languages) can understand lithuanian and latvian

[@gs2142]

​@@oscwavcommentaccountLatvian would probably be impossible. Maybe lithuanian could work though

[@mariomm9080]

i`ve seen that some people are trying to revive Prussian language

[@Lukastar1]

This is awesome! I just spent the summer working in Latvia, so I’ve been studying the language a little bit. The timing of this video couldn’t be better! You should do a part 2 with four speakers: Latvian and Lithuanian speakers together with speakers of their main dialects, Latgalian and Samogitian

[@arnasudovic8383]

But the problem would be that Samogitians totaly understand Lithuanian and Latgalians Latvian. So, it should go somehow in teams or in pairs: Lithuanian-Latgalian, Samogitian-Latvian, Samogitian-Latgalian

[@MultiSciGeek]

It's kinda wild that they're so similar yet so different... I don't know how to explain it, but I love it! Very very interesting topic!

[@gerulyte11]

I watched Latvian Song festival on TV and came to conclusion that Latvians are exclusively beautiful people, probably the most beautiful nation in the world.

[@antrakirsone2992]

Great! ❤❤❤ Wait for it! Watch and comment later. Ouch!!! Michail isn't NATIVE Latvian speaker, he ir Russian/Belorussian guy from Latvia who speaks Latvian 😢😢😢 He lives in Riga, but I feel his roots are in Latgale - maybe mixed family. P.S. WATCHED. About stork in Lithuanian I understood only white animal/bird with red long legs. "Gandrs" in Latvian is "black stork", as rare bird, we use this name rare too. About "medus" (honey) I understood only "bišu" (bees) 😂 and "nes" (bring), "dzeltens" (yellow). The world in Lithuanian I understand always very well is "antra" 😂😂😂 Cause it's my NAME. But in Lithuanian it means "the second" 😅

[@SpiritDragoness]

Yup, his accent is thick. His speech is misleading to anyone who wants to know what Latvian actually sounds like, the feel of the language.

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

Nes - neša (brings). Neš - will bring. Antra:)

[@fyrhunter_svk]

Lithuanian ❤

[@jebatkapat]

Im from Latvia, and have been in Lithuania many times, street banners look similar and I can understand like 20-30% of writings in lithuanian, my grandfather is lithuanian btw, great country, but when it comes to understand EST I'm lost :)

[@adminmick]

very nice! Good luck to your channel!

[@CobraRedstone]

Latvian and Lithuanian are very difficult for speakers to understand each other, however if either are conscious of some basic sound changes, the intelligibility increases a bit. For example (To hear): G > Dz Latvian: dzirdēt Lithuanian: girdėti Latvian also in most cases drops the second last letter (vowel) of words. For example (God): -as > -s Latvian: Dievs Lithuanian: Dievas For Lithuanian, a change is the long baltic ā becoming a long ō (in Lithuanian simply written as "o", while it's retained in Latvian as the long ā. For example (Mother): Latvian: Māte Lithuanian: Motė (You can also see here how Lithuanian retains long vowels for certain words (By conjugation) for the nominative case. Where Motė ends with a long ē. In latvian all such sounds in the nominative have been shortened, and are almost only found in the locative case.)

[@Mediaflashmob]

yes, like Geležinkelis and Dzelzceļš

[@Mediaflashmob]

@@miakri4836 а вы носитель какого?

[@ManteIIo]

@@miakri4836 Latvian is not mutually intelligible with Lithuanian and don't be fooled that knowing either of the two languages will give you ability to onderstand the other one. There are indeed many words that have a common root in both Latvian and Lithuanian from which an approximate meaning can be inferred, but in many cases the meaning has distantly shifted. Bread in Lithuanian is duona; in Latvian dona refers to the end-piece or crust of the bread. Latvian word for “bread” would be maize. Miestas means “city” in Lithuanian, whereas miests in Latvian means a small hamlet. Lithuanian debesis “cloud” does give some sense to a Latvian as debess means “sky”, but I don’t know if any Lithuanian could guess what mākonis (cloud) means - which would be dangus in Lithuanian. There are lots of false friends too. Māksla means “art” in Latvian, whereas moksla in Lithuanian means “science”, (which in Latvian is zinātne). They both come from the cognate roots mācēt in Latvian, moketi in Lithuanian, meaning “to know how to”. The Lithuanian word for “art” is menas, which I can’t connect to a cognate in any language I know. Even basic concepts like colours can be very different. Sure, balts in Latvian and baltas in Lithuanian both mean “white”, but this cognate is shared with Slavic languages too. However melns means “black” in Latvian, whereas melynas in Lithuanian means “blue”, which is zils in Latvian. Lithuanian has the quite different word juodas for “black”. “Red” is sarkans in Latvian and raudonas in Lithuanian. For green we have similarity: zaļš vs. žalias, and one can infer the connection dzeltēns vs. geltonas for “yellow”. So there are many similarities, and many dissimilarities. It is certainly not possible to understand one just based on the other. Consider these two passages: “Visi cilvēki piedzimst brīvi un vienlīdzīgi savā pašcieņā un tiesībās. Viņi ir apveltīti ar saprātu un sirdsapziņu, un viņiem jāizturas citam pret citu brālības garā.” “Visi žmonės gimsta laisvi ir lygūs savo orumu ir teisėmis. Jiems suteiktas protas ir sąžinė ir jie turi elgtis vienas kito atžvilgiu kaip broliai.” They both say the same thing: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

[@CobraRedstone]

@@miakri4836 Latgalian and Latvian derive from a common older form of Latvian. Don't mistake the modern Latgalian language for ancient Latgalian, they are different languages. And both modern Latvian and Latgalian primarily descend from Ancient Latgalian. Latgalian has preserved some archaic features which Latvian has abandoned and Latvian likewise preserving other archaic features which Latgalian abandoned. At the same time though, Latgale being directly under Polish-Lithuanian jurisdiction for quite some time lead to Lithuanian loan-words being introduced whereas in Latvian German loans were. On a surface level Latgalian might appear more similar to Lithuanian, but when you get down to the details, it's fundementally much closer to Latvian.

[@EyeDriveATruck]

@@CobraRedstoneinteresting history, but it doesn’t seem like miakri was arguing. You both have interesting perspectives.

[@irinaspalve8356]

Finally one of the languages I know best! 😁 I should say that for Latvian speaker would be easier to learn Lithuanian because of many common words and points of grammar, but understanding it without learning is a challenge. Especially when hearing spoken language. Written text helps a lot though, and also a bit of help comes from knowledge of Russian. Ayway, last year we were in Lithuania. My husband and his friend are native Latvian speakers, both speak Latgalian and Russian, and even this fact didn't help us to communicate with locals. We mostly used English and very broken Russian.

[@ManteIIo]

Yes, indeed - Latvians are able to understand Lithuanian to a much better degree. This is a widely known phenomenon in linguistics when only one side can understand the other due to multitude of reasons. One of the reason for this is that Latvian culture was butchered and mutilated over the course of 800 years due to conquests by many different powers - Germans, Swedes, Russians and then they have had also big influx of Finno-ugric speakers from the north. Because of this Latvian language has undergone major shift implementing multitude different changes, especially when it comes to introduction of vast amount foreign loan words. So as a Lithuanian, I was never able to understand any Latvian speech - even in this video, apart from partial guessing of some words (beyond me how Marius was able to keep up with him). I probably could understand more Russian or even Polish as Latvian resembles to me as gibberish for the most part.

[@irinaspalve8356]

@@ManteIIo same with me about spoken Lithuanian. I find it not very difficult to understand written language to some extent of course, but when every word is pronounced differently, even pretty similar words are hard to understand. And yes, Latvian has many loan words from other languages, and spoken language may have even more foreign words when standard language. I find it a little bit strange when my husband is speaking with his Latvian speaking friends - they all use many technical terms (car parts) that have origin in Russian language.

[@raivopelcis551]

​@@irinaspalve8356it's because those car parts are indeed called in russian taken words mostly in spoken language/colloquial language of Latvian, In literal language they are completely different or slightly different...

[@baibaleonorabalode2977]

Great content!🇱🇻❤️🇱🇹 Keep it up!

[@fukudzin]

This is interesting. Thank you!

[@DeiviSax]

As a Lithuanian, i can understand what our brothers Latvian people is talking about : 3

[@konradkurland5090]

Esmu latvietis, bet protu (saprotu un spēju saprasties/runāt) lietuviski. Tie, kas domā, kā latviešu un lietuviešu valodas ir ļoti atšķirīgas, varu pateikt, to, ka tas tā tikai šķiet. Ir nepieciešama tikai neliela iedziļināšanas un pieradums. Liela leksikas daļa ir kopīga, tikai jāsaprot , kā veidojas atšķirības. Arī gramatika ir ļoti līdzīga. Dialektu zināšana ļoti palīdz. Lietuviešu valodas žemaišu dialekts no vienas puses tuvinās latviešu valoda, bet latgliešu dialektā ir daudz kas kopīgs ar lietuviešu valodu. Broliai, kalbėsim vieni su kitais lietuviškai ir latviškai ❤

[@dannestrom]

Both the Baltic languages and the Slavic have very much in common. For example they have multiple cases (ackusative, dative, genitive, nominative, vocative, instrumentalis and locative), while Germanic languages have lost those cases more or less. In Swedish we have a common form and genitive. The common form is used for all the other cases. There are some exceptions to this though. My name is Daniel, and in Germanic languages you say "to Daniel", "with Daniel", "from Daniel" etc, while in Slavic and Baltic languages you have case endings, for example in Polish "dla Daniela", "z Danielem" We never have case endings on nouns and names, except for the genitive form "Daniel's car". However we do have some different words. You have the pronouns he and she, and you say "to him/her" not "to he/she".

[@konradkurland5090]

@@dannestrom ,There are four cases in German: nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), dative (indirect object), and genitive (possessive). In icelandic are 4 cases. Originally, cases were present in all Germanic languages and the remnants still exist. Middle Dutch had 4 cases, it seems they are still in Frisian

[@dannestrom]

@@konradkurland5090 That is very true. While we don't have case endings (except for genitive) in Swedish anymore, we do have some remnants. The same in English.

[@Kannaxx]

​@@dannestromYes and also "The" doesn't exist in Latvian language

[@inaakunevica2930]

Es arī jau sen biju ievērojusi, ka lietuviešu valoda ir līdzīga manai dzimtajai latgaliešu valodai. Brāļu tautas, mums jābūt visciešāk vienotām mūžu mūžos. Vēl Ukrainas un Baltkrievijas notikumu kontekstā, kad dziļāk saskāros ar šīm valodām, tajās atklāju tik daudz latgaliešu vārdu!

[@TheMagnusse]

oh what a great video! Thx! 🤓👍🏻

[@-Night-Is-Dark]

Wow! It was very interesting listening to Latvian words and explanations. What you guys did here - I think it is the best way to learn language :D I mean it :) I have been to Latvia 3 or 4 times already, language seems familiar but very hard to understand. I loved Riga, very beautiful city and polite good looking people. Much love from Lithuania

[@JITKanno0]

For a russian(Mihail) his latvian is very good! Moreover, latvian being his second(most likely) language, his attempt to guess a word in lithuanian deserves a thumbs up)) He mentioned lithuanian word "liasas" guessing it as "mežs"("forest" in latvian)- in russian forest iz "ļes", thats why I think his first laguage is russian, also, a slight accent detectable.

[@Gyvenotjas]

There's no such word "liasas" in Lithuanian, "liesas" means skinny "miškas" means a forest. But it seems that he had an advantage as him speaking russian and latvian well game him insights into polish/belarusian which lithuanian shares/borrows few words from.

[@dimioo]

Nowhere else in the world, with the exception of Eastern Europe, there is such a strong emphasis on nationality

[@JITKanno0]

@@dimioo Let's suppose your overgeneralized claim is true, what do you make of it?

[@dimioo]

@@JITKanno0 Let's just do not suppose anything, but introduce it as a verity. I know Eastern Europe has suffered the most from senseless wars and tragedies, but the time to divide people by nationality and language/accent has passed

[@JITKanno0]

@@dimioo "divide people"- what do you mean by "divide"?

[@anuskas9244]

Świetne! Uwielbiam Twoje filmy.... Choć jako Polka nie zrozumiałam absolutnie nic😉 Dobrze, że jest również po angielsku

[@jammmy30]

+++! Sooo… strange.. it kind off sounds a little but like Swedish and a lot of Russian but almost no actual words to understand. That’s so interesting and sooo strange

[@laimi7]

It was a very exciting video for me. Thank you.

[@tomasduminis]

This is a very nice video embracing the friendship between the Baltic Brothers. 🧜🏻‍♂️🧜🏻‍♂️ Well Done!

[@johnrusin4952]

My reaction to this is pretty much the same as the Finnish/Estonian video, in that it is both startling and surprising how distant these two languages are given that as neighbours they couldn't be any closer, and that in both examples we are effective looking at language families of two. You just assume when all Estonians have are Finns and when all Latvians have are Lithuanians and they are right next to each other they'd be much closer. It is such an eye opener.

[@valfrittefternamn]

Actually, for at least 800 years, there has been a great cultural wall in between Latvians and Lithuanians. Lithuanians being their own kings and even conquerors of other nations (together with Polish), while we Latvians (the same like Estonians and Finnish) have always been slaves of other nations. Germans, Swedes, and Russians. Not anymore, of course. But still, you feel the difference. Latvian is heavily mixed up with Finno ugric languages, too, making it very different from original protobaltic. Lithuanian and Prussian languages are much closer to it. All Slavic languages are derivates from Baltic languages.

[@alexandertumarkin5343]

Adore Lithuanian language.

[@MikelisBriedis]

Hello from Latvija, this was very interesting and entertaining, thanks.

[@astrOtuba]

You need to make an epizode with Prussian speaker ⬛⬜🟥⬜⬛ Obviously, Old Prussian is dead, but there's reconstructed Prussian with many L2 speakers and even natively speaking kids. Prussian KZbinrs I know: Prūsiska Tāliwidāsna ETBŪNDA PRŪSA Lilith Wulf (Lilitā)

[@MariusLatauskas]

Hi, I'm the Lithuanian speaker in the video and I would very much be interested in this if Norbert decides to hit me up on this :)

[@astrOtuba]

@@MariusLatauskas jėga, įdomu bus pažiūrėt Beje, pamaniau kad kanalą savo turi kai profilio nuotrauką pamačiau🌚

[@Oberschutzee]

how many prussian speakers u gonna find 10-20?

[@astrOtuba]

@@Oberschutzee I assume there are few hundreds of them.

[@Oberschutzee]

@@astrOtuba maybe

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

Fascinating, beautiful languages--I had heard that they were not very intelligible, but was happy to see that with some patience, they can make it work--although it's clear we are dealing with educated, philology-oriented speakers. On an another point, politics aside, I do see the distant connection to Slavic in a number of words, and it actually helped me guess quite a few words, like finger, hand, animal, and others. Ga andars seems like a cognate with gander, goose, ganso, etc--maybe a stretch, but they are both large birds of sorts. Again, awesome video, and so happy that the conversations were kept flowing, almost exclusively in the target languages! Thanks!

[@valfrittefternamn]

Yes, our Baltic languages share a lot of words with Slavic languages. We shouldn't be ashamed of it, but proud of it. Real Slavic women are so sexy! They have those curves! Only Latino girls can compete with them.

[@rozwichier]

Paldies, Norbert, par šo sen gaidīto video ar baltu valodu salīdzinājumu

[@antasosam8486]

Dukart perskaitęs supratau, kas yra parašyta. Prisidedu prie padėkos.

[@antrakirsone2992]

​@@antasosam8486😂😂😂 Куда вы ВНОСИТЕ благодарность? Обычно вЫносят 😅

[@manometras]

@@antrakirsone2992, причём тут ноша и её ношение? Где вы это видели?

[@antrakirsone2992]

@@manometras Был такой комментарий с "вНошу благодарность". Обычно "вЫНосят". Наверно автор удалил свой комментарий, я за ними не слежу.

[@alehzly]

As a belarusian speaker, i understood almost nothing. I was getting some words, recognized some cognates, but those words were not building into phrases for me. 1 - i was thinking they are talking about some animal. A cat, for example. 2 - i was thinking they are talking about nature, maybe some phenomenon or a tree. 3 - i got it was hotel very fast, but it does not count. Because of lativan word for "treaining room" - it is very similar to slavic so I thought it may be a borrowing(sorry if I am wrong). 4 - i thought it was cheese. yellow. old times. But still got it wrong :D Very nice, I like baltic languages a lot and listen to lithianian and latvian folk music to chill and get rid of some stress. Kūlgrinda and Tautumeitas.

[@ManteIIo]

Belarusian actually has a lot of Lithuanian loanwords. I watched his video about Belarusian language and whether other Slavic speakers could understand it. 4 out of 5 words I believe were of Lithuanian borrowings as there are no equivalents in Slavic languages - Krušna (hail), žvyras (gravel), kišenė (pocket) and triušis (rabbit) - (š pronounced as sh) and the 5th was of a Turkic origin (Imbryk).

[@alehzly]

@@ManteIIo yes, we have a lot, but they are often hidden in the plain sight. And some are just rarely used or very specific. Like žvir you mentioned and, for example, dryhva(drygva - ~dreguva~ - word for a type of swamp). Kišenia, btw, is also the same in polish.

[@Oberschutzee]

Are u litsvin?

[@ManteIIo]

@@alehzly Heck, it's more than enough just to take a quick glimpse at your avatar to realize how much common history there's between Belorussians and Lithuanians.

[@Gyvenotjas]

@@ManteIIo Kišenė is of polish origin

[@irinamedvedeva1287]

Great idea to learn languages! I listened with great interest. 😊👍

[@dace8828]

Latvian/Latgalian here. I learned some basic Lithuanian via Radio M1 back in the nineties because that was the only station our radio would receive 😅 then i studied it on my own some more and can get by without problems when i visit Lithuania (the perks of living 20 mins from their border) Also when you order food in broken Lithuanian the servers are super nice about it 😂

[@4himsanctified]

This channel should have 3 mil subs. Simply fantastic.

[@echo3535]

I think for us, Lithuanians, understanding of Latvian might sometimes get difficult due to cignitive dissonance: the words sound so familiar that one's brain just refuses to process it as a foreign tongue. Anyway, great project, enjoyed it a lot. And of couse - big love to our brali un masas Latviesi

[@ievuciiite]

Finally!!! I am latvian and I have quite hard time to understand Lithuanian 😂

[@AnitaRuza]

Nu beidz, ir taču viegli vismaz galveno domu uzķert.

[@ctiradperunovic]

As a native speaker of a Slavic language - Czech, I don't understand at all what they talked about, but I can recognize some words that obvisouly have the same Balto-Slavic root and which they are in Czech very similar and even have the same meaning (and I assume in other Slavic languages as well). So for example: Roka - Ruka (hand) Cilvēks - Člověk (human) Galva - Hlava (head) Visiem - Všem (to all) Pirksts - Prst (finger) Medus - Med (honey) Zvērs - Zvěř (wild animal) Kad - Keď (Slovak - when) Also "dzīvnieks" is an animal in Latvian and I can see there the root "div" - divoký, divý, divočina - which means a wildness or to be wild in Slavic languages, so the connection here is quite obvious I think. I also recognize a false friend here, but I really don't know if they have some common root or if it's just a random similarity but still it's quite funny: Viesnīca in Latvian is a hotel - Vesnice in Czech is a village

[@janismancevics6638]

Regarding “dzīvnieks”, dzīvs means alive, so dzīvnieks is literally something that does the job of living quite well. :)

[@CobraRedstone]

​@@janismancevics6638​ -nieks to refer to a profession or job is an innovation of it's meaning from more recent times. The conservative meaning of "-nieks" is "One which is characterised by this" Dzīvnieks thus meaning "The one which lives".

[@janismancevics6638]

@@CobraRedstone that’s a formal way of saying it, but really nieks means something small and insignificant. So by calling something dzīvnieks you say that for it, it takes no effort to live. Just like dārznieks a person who has learned to take care of a garden and knows how to do it, so for them it’s nieks to do it.

[@CobraRedstone]

@@janismancevics6638 Which as I said, is an innovated meaning. Dzievnieks wasn't formed on this modern meaning, but the old one.

[@ctiradperunovic]

@@janismancevics6638 Oh, so this also makes sense, because in Slavic languages root "živ" means also to be alive, so still it's pretty similar I think. :)

[@jamesoates5471]

In English the drink made from Honey is Mead. So the root of Medus could be PIE.

[@antrakirsone2992]

Nope! Medus ir med-us.

[@bagifane]

Wow guys that was sooo interesting!!!

[@JuliaBrizhan]

So interesting!❤

[@emjk77]

The Latvian guy is in fact a Russian-speaking Latvian, you can hear the Russian accent very clearly.

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

As a Lithuanian i could not hear it, barely understood something

[@emjk77]

@@jurgasbielinis2130 I speak Russian, so I can safely say it is very clear. When I saw his name, I knew I was not wrong.

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

@@emjk77 I can easily tell russian accent in Lithuanian or English. But Latvian sound so different that even the second time knowing this I don’t really pickup. His r’s though sound very rolling, don’t know if that is one of the signs too

[@tuscanleather3209]

@@jurgasbielinis2130 Gal mažai rusų ar latvių pažįstamų turite. Pačios tėvas rusas, tad rusakalbius iš kart atpažįstu. Pasiklausykite kaip jis taria žodžius, ypač kaip jis taria pirmąjį skiemenį kiekviename žodyje(nes tokia latvių kirčiuotė). Toks savotiškas duslmumas budingas rusakalbiams.

[@jurgasbielinis2130]

@@tuscanleather3209 ačiū! Labai įdomu:)