LITUÂNIA E LITUANO

Hoje, dia 5 de janeiro de 2018, eu completo 2 anos e 3 meses de estudos de língua lituana e a última postagem que fiz nesse blog, foi dia 5 de junho, há exatos 7 meses. Desde 2015 eu tenho tido aulas desse idioma e foram concluídas 326 horas de aulas particulares. Entre 7 de julho e 21 de agosto de 2017, estive em Vilnius, capital da Lituânia para conhecer o país e me aprimorar linguisticamente.

Em relação ao idioma, penso que esteja dentro do nível B2 do Quadro Comum Europeu, mas ainda preciso de muita leitura e vivência para consolidar esse nível e poder avançar para os níveis seguintes. Digo que a experiência de aprender um idioma como esse, tem sido para mim como uma enorme ginástica mental, mas o mesmo, tem me ajudado a aprofundar e compreender outros idiomas, como é o caso do russo por exemplo.

Na Lituânia, consegui manter conversas 100% em lituano, tendo altos e baixos. Eu tentava evitar o idioma inglês ao máximo. Como estratégia, pelo menos nas duas primeiras semanas lá, eu perguntava várias vezes a mesma coisa para pessoas diferentes que encontrava pelas ruas. Isso me ajudou a "soltar a língua". Muitas delas tendiam a me responder em inglês e eu pedia que continuássemos em lituano. Conversava com taxistas, baristas, vendedores, e com pessoas que fiz amizade lá. Em alguns momentos, os locais ficavam espantados por eu falar com eles nesse idioma.

Creio que essa foi apenas a primeira vez que fui pra lá. Não vejo a hora de retornar a esse país. Foi sem dúvida a viagem mais marcante e gratificante de minha vida.

LITHUANIAN - An Epic throughout a Mysterious Language

I have been exhaustively learning Lithuanian for 1 year and 6 months. While it is little time to learn a foreign language, it seems I have done it all my life or part thereof. The feeling I have is as if I were Ulysses trying to return home, in Ithaca, after fighting in the Trojan War as reported poetically in Homer's Odyssey. My epic has begun on 5 October, 2015. This all started because I was doing Russian conversation classes with my teacher, who is actually born in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. After doing 36 Russian conversation classes with her, I realized that I was facing a unique opportunity, that would be, to be able to learn Lithuanian with a native speaker.

Many people have asked me or could ask me, but why Lithuanian? I have been studying foreign languages for a number of years and decided to focus on learning Indo-European languages. I have studied and had contact with languages of other families, such as: Mandarin, Sino-Tibetan family; Indonesian, Austronesian family; Yucatec Maya, Mayan family; Hebrew, Semitic family. But after a personal choice, I decided to focus entirely on Indo-European languages, so that I can learn at least 10 languages of this family. I have already knew that Lithuanian was a language quoted by several authors as being the oldest modern language of this family, and could be compared to Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Hittite. With that, my curiosity was increasing even more and I thought that one day, at least 10 years from now, I could learn it. By the time I started learning Lithuanian, I was actually thinking of going back to German studies, but since I had a teacher in front of me and I did not know if I would have an opportunity like that again, I decided to go down that road and leave the German aside, at least at that moment, for now, I have just returned with my studies of German in a school.

As a sailor, among unknown waters, I began my endeavour to understand something so different from everything I had learned so far, in fact, some elements of this language resemble Russian, but even so, I was in a totally strange territory.

I felt alone on a float, moving through calm waters and facing marine storms that almost beat me. At times I could see land and think it was close to home, but it was hallucinations caused by lack of fresh water or by being exposed for days and more days in the intense heat of the sun. Days passed and I arrived on dry land, but just like Ulysses, I faced giants and frightening monsters. The only way was to return to the sea and try to travel once more.

Months and more months went by and I knew many islands and fabulous beings. I began to understand things I had never seen before and to savor the taste of exotic foods. The perfumes I breathed had aromas that ran from the West, past Persia and into India. Again and again I was intoxicated by drinking a strong and unequaled drink. I was cold, warm, hungry, thirsty, and I was attacked by sea monsters and struck by heavy rain. At times I did not feel my arms or legs. My strength almost deserted me, but I always thought of beloved Ithaca. Staying so long away from home was an incomparable misfortune to me.

Giant waves dragged me from side to side and it seemed that I had provoked the king of the seas in person. Over time, I got used to life at sea and learned to fish and store rainwater. When I arrived on a new island, I hunted and picked fruit up. Today I feel that with each passing day, that I am closer to home and that the sea no longer frightens me. I dream of home and dream that the sea has also become mine. My return to beloved Ithaca has not yet been possible, but being able to know and map this sea of information and feelings that is the Lithuanian language, full of mysteries and nuances, gave me the proof that the fact that I want to return home and see that In front of me I would have to cross a whole sea, it was already worth it.

LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE

Lithuanian is a language which belongs to the family of Indo-European Languages, Baltic branch, eastern group. Its alphabet consists of 32 letters, being 11 vowels and 21 consonants. It does not use articles, nor indefinites as definites, as well as Russian and Latin. In relation to declensions, in Lithuanian, there are 7 cases, which are: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. It is worth remembering that in German are 4, in Latin 6, in Classical Greek 5 and in Modern Greek 4, and in Russian 6.

There are 3 simple tenses, which are the past, present and future. And there is also the past frequentative tense which represents an action that happened in the past, as well as the "used to" in English language. It is not possible to describe a continuous action in Lithuanian, as in English, e.g., if you call a Lithuanian, you ask him what are he doing, he replies that he reads a book and not that he is reading a book. In addition to the indicative mood, we have in Lithuanian the conditional and the imperative. The third person singular and plural are always the same.

In Lithuanian, as well as in Russian, there are verbal aspects, but in the first language, they are in all tenses, being that in Russian, it only applies to the past and the future. The aspect is divided in perfective and imperfective. In the perfective, we put a prepositional particle at the beginning of the verb and it modifies the meaning of that verb. In the imperfective, the verb maintains the infinitive. 

The adjectives always come before nouns, as in English, German, Russian and Chinese. In relation to gender, we have the masculine and the feminine.

This was just a brief overview of the Lithuanian language.

About the title

In Lithuanian, the word lietus means rain and the verb lyti is to rain. Wether we observe these two words, we can think about the name Lietuva (Lithuania). There is in Lithuanian, an expression which if we realize it in Portuguese or even in English, it seems us a bit curious. This expression is lyja lietus, which could be translated as "the rain rains", as in the Brazilian song Chove Chuva ("the rain rains") by Jorge Ben Jor.

But leaving the music behind us, as Portuguese and English speakers it would be weird to talk like this. On the other hand, the Lithuanians use this expression for emphasizing this action of the nature. For us, it would be weird also thinking in the movement of the clouds through the sky like fish in an aquarium, or even though in the sea, but in Lithuanian, literally, the clouds swim in the sky, as we can see in the expression debesys plaukia; being the first word, the plural noun clouds and the second, the verb to swim in the third person of singular and/or plural which are the same in Lithuanian. Some of you maybe are also thinking that is weird the fact that I did not show you the definite article in the beginning of the sentence, but it occurs because in Lithuanian does not exist any kind of articles.

Let us get back to our title! Lietuva - Uma Jornada pelo País da Chuva (Lietuva - A Journey through the Country of the Rain). It was a caring way that I thought for playing with the meaning of this name and nicknaming it as País da Chuva (Country of the Rain), which is one of many accepted and debated theories among the Lithuanians, about the origin of this word. But that does not mean it is the truth behind the name of that country. There are another theories, but I, particularly, liked that one and have decided to use it as a title from my blog. Just imagine the possibility of making a journey through a country of the rain, where the clouds swim, the snow snows, the wind blows, and so on. In Lithuanian, thinking this way is possible and it has been helping me to open more and more my mind for accepting the new and descovering the poetry of this language.