BALTIC BRANCH

Rut Valls, Lluís Riera and Martí Diaz

The Baltic Branch

• It consists of related lenguages that were spoken in the areas extending in the east and southeast of the Baltic Sea.

Western and eastern Baltic lenguages

• Western Baltic: Contains only extinct lenguages

• Eastern Baltic:contains only two surviving lenguages: Latvian an Lithuanian.

Surviving lenguages

• Latvian: Is the official lenguage of the Republic of Latvia. Latvian is also spoken in Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and USA. There are about 1.5 million of latvian speakers in the world.

• Lithuanian: Is the offficial lenguage of Lithuania since 1918. Besides Lithuania, it is also spoken in Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Canada, and the U.S.A. There are about 3.1 million of lithuanian speakers in the world.

Lithuanian and Latvian alphabet

• Latvian alphabet

• Lithuanian alphabet

• As you can see, the basic vocabularies are quite different