Sveiki,
leiskite man įkišti savo trigrašį. Let me introduce my nose in your discussion.
Manto linksniavimas buvo teisingas, tačiau kirčiuoti reikėtų kiek kitaip:
Mantaz’ declension was correct, only the accentuation needs a little correction:
Vienãskaita (Singular):
Vardiniñkas: Tanãsis
Kilminiñkas: Tanãsio
Naudiniñkas: Tanãsiui
Galiniñkas: Tanãsį
́Įnagininkas: Tanasiù
Viẽtininkas: Tanãsyje
Šauksminiñkas: Tanãsi!
Daugìskaita (Plural) :
V. Tanãsiai
K. Tanãsių
N. Tanãsiams
G. Tanasiùs
Įn. Tanãsiais
Vt. Tanãsiuose
Š. Tanãsiai
Oh, and you should learn lithuanian grammatical terms as they are widely used in educational litterature.
Rokas:
I hear people say 'palatalization' all the time but I have no idea what it means.
Palatalization is the raise of the middle part of the tongue ([j] sound feature) while pronouncing consonants (kitaip tariant, „minkštinimas“, „minkštumas“).
Ego:
In the word "sveikas" for example, it says that the diphthong ei takes a rising tone. This means that the "i" is higher and more stressed than the "e", so I could write it like sveίkas (sveikas). Have I understood correctly?
As Mantaz have already answered, you should put a tilde on „i“: „sveĩkas“. Remember that accentuation marks
do not remove dots from letters, but it is impossible to write correctly here.
There are two possible ways to pronounce diphthongs which have letters „a“ or „e“. You either prolong the initial sound in case of
tvirtapradė priegaidė (
the falling intonation,
l’intonation descendante, I am not aware of the correct term in English) where you put the accute sign on the first letter (like in „véidas“, „kálnas“, „vérda“), either pronounce the [e] or [a] as short as possible giving the green light to a prolonged pronunciation of the final sound in case of
tvirtagalė priegaidė (
the raising intonation,
l’intonation montante). In the latter case you put the tilde on the second letter: „sveĩkas“, „laũkas“, „ska ̃mbina“.
Sorry, it is painful to work with this Veranda font that has almost absolutely no support for diacritical marksYou would probably better understand the difference if you compared these sound files:
káltas –
kal̃ tasmérkti –
mer̃ ktiNot understanding intonations of stressed diphthongs with [a] or [e] is fatal. Do not bother trying to understand intonations (pitches, if you prefer) of other syllable types, but you should not neglect the ones with „e“ and „a“.
]My book says that ir, am etc are diphthongs and in such words puts the stress often over the consonants. Like the verb "skambina". What is this supposed to mean? That the consonant is stressed? Can consonants be stressed like in Slavic languages? Or else why is "ir" a dipthong?
Putting an accentuation mark and accentuating a syllable is not the same thing.
First of all, the notion of dyphthongs is not complex at all in Lithuanian. In our language a dyphthong is perceived as a combination of [a “pure“ vowel + any vocalized sound]. “Pure“ vowels are those present in every language: [a, e, i, o, u] etc. Vocalized sounds are actually voiced consonants that have no voicelless counterparts: [j, w, l, r, m, n]. Combinations from the former vowels and the latter consonants are called
dyphthongs in many languages, not only in Lithuanian, simply just in our language they have a profound meaning when talking about syllabic modulations (pitches, intonations).
NB! In fonetic tanscription [j] and [w] are transcribed as [„i“] and [„u“] when present in dyphthongs, don’t get confused.
No, consonants
cannot be stressed in Lithuanian, but they can be
accented only if they are present in a dyphthong.
My pc is crashed and at the service right now. I am using public computers right now and I cannot install new fonts here..
Lithuanian character support is installed by default in all modern operating systems and cannot be unistalled. If you cannot see Lithuanian letters correctly, that means you will not be able to read any text written in other languages but English, so the system is unusable for a professionnal work. You should demand installation of at least one richer font like
Code2000.
Lithuanian phonology still gives me some troubles.. First of all that -ai. Would you say it's like "ay" in "day" or like "i" in "life"? Or something in the middle?
Lithuanian palatalization rules are very simple (the sign [˙] means a long vowel; the [´] means a palatalized consonant; the [.] denotes a half-long vowel):
1) every consonant that stands before a front vowel (i.e. [e, e˙, ė˙, i, i˙]) is palatalized: „dėti“ [d´́ė˙t´i], „keturi“ [k´etur´ì] etc.
2) every consonant that stands before a palatalized consonant is palatalized: „linksmintis“ [l´íŋ´k´s´m´in´t´is], „krebždėti“ [k´r´eb´ž´d´́ė˙t´i]
3) the letter „i“ that stands before a back vowel (i.e. [a, a˙, ɔ, o˙, u, u˙] becomes a sound of palatalization and thus is not pronounced: „kliūva“ [k´l´ũ˙va], „Vilnius“ [v´íl´n´us]
4) the sound [a] or [a˙]
cannot be pronounced after a palatalized consonant; one must always convert it to [e] or [e˙]: „Šiauliai“ [š´eul´eĩ.], „griaučiai“ [g´r´é.ut´š´ei].
Tikiuosi, padėjau.
United Kingdom (United Kingdom)
. Or maybe its difficulty will smash my courage 
. I have been studying ancient Greek recently too and I have already found similarities, like the genitive in -o, reminds so much of Homeric Greek!
Lithuania (Lietuva)
, when I first saw your nick I thought you were Greek.
. I'd like to post the exercises here but I won't have my pc for the next days and I cannot have Lithuanian fonts on uni's pcs.
. I am using public computers right now and I cannot install new fonts here..
Latvia (Latvija)
Turkey (Türkiye)