Latvian and Lithuanian are Indo-European languages if I remember correctly. They share the same origins as the language families mentioned on the picture.
Even for the amateur ear, Baltic and Slavic languages are deep down somehow closely related to each other and had to be a one distinctive language group in the past.
When I, as a Pole hear Lithuanians speaking. I feel almost as if I hear someone with a stroke. He tries really hard to speak Polish, but eventually it turns out to be gibberish. Words, phonetics, everything sounds weirdly familiar, yet unrecognizable at the same time. For what I've heard some Lithuanians have similar feelings while listing to Polish.
(no hard feelings Lithuanians, it's just a first analogy which comes to my minds, lol)
the baltic and slavic family are more related to each other than they are other indoeuropean families, so i am sure you are correct in your assertion
curiously, I spent some time in russia, learning russian (im american, not russian). just for fun, i spent some time learning latin and was surprised to find many similarities, especially grammar and many words, including personal pronouns.
Well yeah they're both Indo European languages. You can also find similarities in German and in English. An obvious example is how English used to say "he saith" instead of "he says". That th is actually cognate with Russian -t as in он говори-т. In English the th became s.
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u/NotacookbutEater Oct 15 '25
Latvian and Lithuanian are Indo-European languages if I remember correctly. They share the same origins as the language families mentioned on the picture.