Lithuanian is considered one of the most archaic of the living Indo-European languages. It is one of two (another is Latvian) living Baltic family of languages, which is perhaps closest to the Slavic family. It is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 3.5 million native Lithuanians.
Like most of the Indo-European languages, Lithuanian employs modified Roman script (including 32 letters).
There are two grammatical genders in Lithuanian. It has the free stress.
Each noun is declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. The 1st scientific Compendium of Lithuanian language was published 1856/57 by August Schleicher, a professor at Prague University.
In older literature on Baltic languages, "Lithuanian" can sometimes refer to Baltic Languages in general.