- Mission 2012: My Big Fat Greek Mission
As I’m learning about my Lithuanian heritage, I am also learning about the language. So far I have looked at Lithuanian greetings, some common courtesies, how to ask questions, numbers, directions, and basic verbs. This week, let’s learn some descriptive words.
An upcoming trip to Lithuania will provide a really good opportunity to test out these 10 most important things to know, to get by in any language for myself and see how good my advice is! So this week I’m on the eight item — descriptive words.
Lithuanian nouns have two genders — masculine and feminine — and adjectives also have a gender which must match the noun they describe. All of the adjectives listed above are masculine. To make them feminine, change the endings as follows:
| masculine | -as | -us | -is |
|---|---|---|---|
| feminine | -a | -i | -ė |
Note that not all of the words listed above. There are a few comparatives, which are formed by dropping the ending (-as, -is, -us) and adding -esnis, which becomes -esnė for feminine.
There are also a few adverbs. Adverbs are formed by dropping the adjective ending and adding -(i)ai. And adverb comparatives are formed with the ending -iau.
As I realized when I wrote the list for Italian, this could really be item #3 or #4, rather than close to the end at #8, because these are such useful words. They can be given on their own in answer to questions like “how are you?”, or just to share an opinion, such as by pointing to something and saying “pretty”, or “big”. It’s not eloquent speech, but it conveys information, and that’s useful.
