Basic information on the spoken languages and the educational system:

The Lithuanian language belongs to the Baltic subfamily of the Indo-European languages The official language of Lithuania since 1918, Lithuanian is spoken by alomst 3 million people and by an additional half-million elsewhere in the world. The importance of Lithuanian in linguistic studies stems from its designation as the most archaic of the living Indo-European languages. It is also the language closest to Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral tongue from which all the Indo-European languages evolved. The language that the Lithuanians speak is one of the three Baltic languages. The other two languages in this family are Old Prussian and Latvian. The speakers of Old Prussian were completely assimilated to German by the 17th century, and thus that language is now extinct. Lithuanian uses a modified Roman alphabet for writing.

Of the two surviving Baltic languages, Lithuanian is considered the oldest or least changed. It is not very easy to classify all the Lithuanian dialects. Nevertheless, it is generally recognized that the Aukstaitian and Zemaitian dialects are the main dialects of the Lithuanian language. What today is called Modern Lithuanian grew out of the Suvulkai, a southern branch of the Aukstaitian dialect.

There are four main languages taught in Lithuania: English, Russian, German and French.  The languages offered as first foreign language are English, German or French. The languages offered as second foreign language may be any modern language. Since 1990, Russian has been one of the foreign languages for students to choose from. Earlier it used to be a compulsory language, started at the age of 8. The number of students learning languages other than those mentioned above is insignificant. It is usually difficult to find a native speaker able to teach Swedish, Finnish, Latvian, Italian etc., and to ensure continuity after the instructor leaves, because only teachers for English, German, Russian and French are trained in Lithuania. The third language offered can be any modern language, or Latin.

Ten percent of schools used to offer modern language learning beginning at the age of 8 and continuing until the age of 18. From the 2000-2001 school year, early language learning has greatly expanded with the introduction of the new National Early Language Learning Curriculum Framework. During the last two or three years of secondary education, very few schools offer literature, history and geography of the target country in the respective foreign language. The number of subjects is very limited due to the lack of qualified teachers able to teach other subjects in the foreign languages.

Students choosing schools with Russian or Polish as the medium of instruction have to learn the Lithuanian language beginning at the age of 7 or 8. The history and geography of Lithuania are also taught in Lithuanian. Other subjects taught inLithuanian are introduced gradually.

At the beginning of the 2000 – 2001 school year, there were 2.246 state day-time secondary schools in Lithuania, including 2.031 schools with teaching conducted in the Lithuanian language, 68 in Russian, 74 in Polish, 1 in Belorusian, 1 in German, as well as 68 schools with students taught in several languages: Lithuanian and Russian in 23 schools, Lithuanian and Polish in 11, Russian and Polish in 26, Russian and Belorusian in 1, Lithuanian, Russian and Polish in 10, Lithuanian and English in 1 school.

The smaller national communities – Karaites, Belorusians, Ukrainians and others – learn their native language in Sunday schools or at additional courses.

At the beginning of the 2000 – 2001 school year, 586.000 pupils studied in the secondary schools throughout Lithuania. Out of them 511.000 (87%) were taught in the Lithuanian language, 33.000 (5,7%) in Russian, 13.000 (2,3%) in Polish and 180 (0,3%) in Belorusian.

On 23 March 2000 Lithuania ratified the European Framework Convention of National Minorities.

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