What Slavic language is closer to Lithuanian?

Would appreciate your comments.

It difficult to tell because all of Slavic languages are distant enough from Lithuanians.
Slavic,Baltic and Germanic languages separated few thousand of years ago.

Well, the Lithuanian language is in the Baltic language group. I think I would say it's probably closest to Russian considering that Lithuania was once part of the Russian Empire until it's independence in 1918. I assume their language would of been Russian influenced during that time. I could be wrong, of course.

Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages, along with Latvian. An earlier Baltic language, Old Prussian, was extinct by the 19th century; the other Western Baltic languages, Curonian and Sudovian, went extinct earlier.

Latvian is pretty similar but it's not Slavic. I personally don't think, there's any Slavic language that sounds like Lithuanian.


not even close.

What is it you disagree with me that Lithuanian doesn't sound Russian?

I don't disagree with you, I'm stating facts. These two languages have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Why do you think they sound alike?

According to this, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

Is this research based on vocabulary similarities?I have doubts in it...

but where do you see Lithuanian?

It is mentioned in Russian in upper right courner of the linked article.
But I have doubts that Lithuanian and Latvian share 45-47% of similar vocabulary
with Russian.Not even likely.

You are wrong. The Lithuanians are strange birds. You should know that they didn't convert to Christianity until 1386. So too their language has come through the centuries in archaic form. The supernumerous verbal conjugations required by Lithuanian are only matched by one other living Indo-European language and that is Sanskrit. Sankrit is kept "alive" in spite of its ancientness because it is the sacredotal language of two major world religions. Lithuanian remains magnificently archaic because the Lithuanians were isolated for so long, and then when they did burst out onto the scene of history, becoming the pagan overlords of Slavic Ruthenia, they made their decrees in Ruthenian, not Lithuanian. They kept their language for themselves. When they allied with Poland much of the Lithuanian aristocracy was Polonized. When Lithuanian aristocrats decided to become nationalists a century ago many of them had to learn to speak Lithuanian and undergo the study of well neigh endless conjugations, but the Lithuanian language is not "closer" or "further" to any one Slavic language more than it is to any other Slavic language. The Slavic and Baltic branches of the Indo-European language family diverged long ago, and given the traditionalist bent of the Lithuanians, it'd take a helluva lot more time than a couple centuries of Russian domination to make Lithuanian take on a Slavic form.

I once met a guy from Bulgaria and when he was talking on the phone with his sister, I swear it sounded just like Russian spoken with a strong Lithuanian accent. I think he was talking in a Shopski dialect because Standard Bulgarian sounds different.

Incidentally, Shopi also have preserved an ancient multi-part singing style which is very similar to Lithuanian sutartines - neither Poles nor Russians have anything like that.

So, I stay by my earlier claim that phonetically South Slavic languages are closer to Lithuanian than any Slavic tongue from the neighbouring countries.
Vocabulary is a different thing.

The Old Belarusian is the closest Slavic language.

I think Lithuanian has about 3% similarity to Russian via words and grammar, but also the old Albanian is very similar to Lithuanian if you are very carefullly considering it. Also, Latin, Portuguese, English etc. have similarities to Lithuanian. Regarding Bulgarian and Lithuanian, I don't think so. Perhaps a coincidence?

What I've been able to observe, both Lithuanian and Albanian (although generically from different families, even if Indo-European as a major phylum) are exceedingly conservative languages, linguistically speaking, that is, with challengingly intricate morphologies and conjugational patterns, especially the latter!