Lithuanian Letters & Accents

The Lithuanian alphabet has 32 letters: A Ą B C Č D E Ę Ė F G H I Į Y J K L M N O P R S Š T U Ų Ū V Z Ž. Nine of them carry a mark (ą č ę ė į š ų ū ž), and three letters of English are missing: Q, W and X are used only in foreign names and words kept in their original spelling, so Lithuanian writes kvadratas (square) and taksi (taxi).

Two things surprise newcomers. Y is a vowel, not a consonant: it is a long i, and it stands in the alphabet right after Į, not near the end (tyla, silence; lyja, it is raining). And the pairs ch, dz and dž are written with two letters but spoken as one sound: choras (choir), dzūkai (the people of the Dzūkija region), džiaugsmas (joy). They are not counted as separate letters.

Lithuanian is written much as it is spoken, and most nouns announce themselves with an ending: Jonas, Vilnius, Lietuva, Klaipėda. Those endings change with the grammar, and many of the special letters live in them, which is why a missing mark often changes what a sentence means, not just how it is spelled.

Lithuanian accents on letters: nosinė, ė, ū and the háček

The little tail on ą ę į ų is called nosinė (from nosis, nose), because these vowels were once nasal, as they still are in Polish. Today they are simply long: ą is a long a, ę a long open e, į a long i, ų a long u. They matter most at the ends of words, where they carry grammar: ranka is a hand, ranką is the hand as an object (Paduok ranką, give me your hand), and lietuvių kalba, the Lithuanian language, literally means the language of the Lithuanians. On its own, į is the everyday word for into or to: į Vilnių, to Vilnius.

ė, the e with a dot, is a long closed e and a different vowel from e and ę: mėnulis (moon), Klaipėda, and the ending of many women's names and surnames, such as Eglė or Grybauskaitė. ū with the macron is a long u: sūris (cheese), būti (to be), ačiū (thank you). So Lithuanian has two ways to write a long i (y and į) and two to write a long u (ū and ų). They sound the same, and grammar decides which is right: akys means eyes, akį an eye as the object of a sentence.

č, š and ž carry the háček (Unicode calls it the caron). Lithuanian borrowed it from Czech in the late 19th century in place of the Polish-style cz, sz and ż of older Lithuanian books. č is the ch of church, š the sh of ship, ž the s of measure, and they are everywhere: šaltibarščiai (the pink cold beetroot soup), Kūčios (the Christmas Eve supper), žmogus (person). Plain c is ts, as in cats, and j is the y of yes.

Lithuanian quotation marks, dashes and stress marks: „ “ – ◌́ ◌̃ ◌̀

Lithuanian quotation marks open low and close high, as in German: „Labas“ means hello. The opening „ sits on the line, and the closing “ is the mark English uses to open a quote, so English “ ” or straight quotes look wrong in a Lithuanian text. The dash is a spaced en dash –, and it often stands in for a missing is: Vilnius – Lietuvos sostinė (Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania).

Dates run year first: 21 October 2026 is written 2026-10-21 or, in words, 2026 m. spalio 21 d. Numbers take a decimal comma (3,14) and a space between thousands. Lithuania has used the euro since 1 January 2015, when it replaced the litas (Lt); the sign usually follows the number: 25 €.

Ordinary text never shows stress, but dictionaries and textbooks do, because Lithuanian stress can fall on any syllable and moves as a word changes form, and stressed long syllables carry a pitch accent. Three marks are used: the acute ◌́ for a long syllable with a falling tone, the tilde ◌̃ for a rising one, and the grave ◌̀ for a short stressed vowel. They are typed as combining marks after the letter, so a + ́ gives á and ą + ̃ gives ą̃, and a small i keeps its dot under the mark (i̇́), a rule Unicode writes down specially for Lithuanian.

How to type Lithuanian characters on a keyboard

Lithuanian keyboard layout: on Windows, add Lithuanian under Settings → Time & language → Language & region; the layouts on offer are Lithuanian, Lithuanian Standard and Lithuanian IBM. In the classic Lithuanian layout the number row types ą č ę ė į š ų ū on the keys 1 to 8 and ž on the = key, with Shift for the capitals. That is why people ask how to type numbers on a Lithuanian keyboard: the number pad still gives digits, or switch back to English for a moment.

Windows without the Lithuanian layout: Western Windows has Alt codes only for the four letters it shares with Western European languages: Š Alt+0138, š Alt+0154, Ž Alt+0142, ž Alt+0158 (hold Alt and type on the number pad). For the rest, Microsoft Word turns a hex code into the letter when you press Alt+X right after it: ą 0105, č 010D, ę 0119, ė 0117, į 012F, ų 0173, ū 016B. Each capital is one less: Ą 0104, Č 010C, Ę 0118, Ė 0116, Į 012E, Ų 0172, Ū 016A.

Mac, phones and the web: on a Mac, add the Lithuanian input source in System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. On iPhone and Android, add Lithuanian as a keyboard language, and the letters appear on the keys or behind a long press of a, c, e, i, s, u and z. In HTML every letter has a named entity: ą ą, č č, ę ę, ė ė, į į, š š, ų ų, ū ū, ž ž, with capitals starting in a capital (Ž Ž); „ and “ are „ and “.

Where Lithuanian is spoken, and the languages close to it

Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania 🇱🇹 and, since 2004, one of the official languages of the European Union. CLDR estimates about 2.4 million speakers: roughly 2.3 million in Lithuania, around 140,000 in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, home to one of the largest Lithuanian communities abroad, and about 8,000 in Poland 🇵🇱, around Puńsk and Sejny near the border. Large communities also live in Ireland, Norway and the United States.

Its closest relative is Latvian, the only other living Baltic language. The two share much grammar and old vocabulary but are not mutually intelligible, and Latvian marks long vowels with macrons (ā ē ī ū); Lithuanian writes long i as y or į and long u as ų or ū, and ą and ę are long vowels too; see Latvian Letters for ā ē ģ ķ ļ ņ. Polish shares ą and ę, but there they still sound nasal. For the flag, the yellow, green and red hearts 💛💚❤️ and the basketball 🏀 Lithuanians love, see Lithuania Emoji.

Linguists prize Lithuanian for how much it keeps of the ancient Indo-European parent language: sūnus (son) is close to the Sanskrit sūnú, and dievas (god) matches Sanskrit devá.