Lithuanian Out Loud 0058 - Cha Cha Cha Ha Ha Ha

Okay, well, we’ve got a lot to do so we should get started.  Okay, no blah, blah, blah, blah.  Hi there, I’m Jack and I’m Raminta and welcome back to Lithuanian Out Loud where we offer the world the Lithuanian language.  We’re not teachers, but we do the best we can.

Do remember the word for the month of March in Lithuanian? …kovas.

How cute!  Do you like this little bird kovas?  Oh, I love kovas, I’m waiting for kovas so bad in Lithuania.

According to the Wikipedia page entitled, The Hill of Witches or Raganų Kalnas is an outdoor sculpture gallery in Juodkrantė, Lithuania.  The Hill of Witches is on a forested sand dune on the Curonian Spit near the town of Neringa.  On the hill you can find about 80 wood sculptures and a series of trails.  The artists are following a tradition of woodcarving from the Samogitian culture.  The artwork depicts characters from Lithuanian folklore and the traditional Lithuanian religion.  This is a must-see part of Lithuania and admission is free.  We’ll paste a link to a photo gallery of the artwork on the Lithuanian Out Loud blogpage.

Very nice.  On this episode we’re going to work on the sounds of letters.  In episode 0050 we introduced the accusative case or galininkas.  Some listeners have been asking us to clarify the sounds of letters that are associated with nosinė.  These are the letters that have a little tail on them and they have a long sound.  What does nosinė mean?  Well, I read somewhere that it means, nasal but I can’t find the reference.  Nosinė also translates as handkerchief.  Let’s focus on the difference in sound between nosinė and non-nosinė letters…

Lietuva                      Lietuvą

Palanga                     Palangą

gatvė                         gatvę

kavinė                       kavinę

bokštas                      bokštą

parkas                        parką

pilis                           pilį

automobilis                automobilį

kambarys                  kambarį

traukinys                   traukinį

muziejus                   muziejų

Sidnėjus                    Sidnėjų

So, again here is the accusative case.  Words with vardininkas endings change to galininkas endings.

-a changes to –ą nosinė -ė changes to –ę nosinė -as changes to –ą nosinė -is changes to –į nosinė -ys changes to –į nosinė -us changes to -ų nosinė

Now, here are the sounds one last time

-a   –ą -ė   –ę -as  –ą -is   –į -ys  –į -us  -ų

We hope that helps clear it up a bit for you.

Here are some more sounds.  Don’t worry too much about learning all these new words.  All we want you to learn here are the new Lithuanian vocal sounds.  The combination of the letters, c, and, h, makes a sound like, ch.  Here are some examples… prašom pakartoti, please repeat…

chameleon                      chameleonas

chaos                             chaosas

chemistry                       chemija

surgeon                          chirurgas

chorus                             choras

chronic                           chroniškas

hooligan                          chuliganas

ha ha ha                         cha cha cha

to jingle                           džerškėti

jazz                                 džiazas

jungle                              džiunglės

jeans                               džinsai

joy                                 džiaugsmas

a Lithuanian folk-dance    džigūnas

a dryer                           džioviklis

a thin, emaciated person  džiūsna

kaip aš (like me), oh sorry!

a piece of dry bread         džiuvėsis

toast                              džiuvėsiukas

Don’t worry too much about learning all these words, we just want you to be familiar with these Lithuanian sounds.

Šaunu!  Great!  You made it to the end of another episode!  Šaunu!

The Hill of Witches or Raganų Kalnas http://www.pbase.com/mkuncaitis/witches_hill

Alright!  That’s it for today!  Thanks for the download!

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If you’d like to see the Lithuanian spelling of any word in this series just go to WWW dot Lithuanian dot L I B S Y N dot com.

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Thanks to CCMixter.org, Ditto Ditto and Vieux Farka Toure for the podcast music.

Thanks for tuning in, tell your friends about us, we’ll see you on the next episode of Lithuanian Out Loud.

I’m Jack and I’ve never met a Lithuanian I didn’t like.  Viso gero!  Sudie!

http://www.Lithuanian.Libsyn.com Skype voicemail:  Lithuanianoutloud email Raminta and Jack at: [email protected] Thanks to:  CCMixter.org, ditto ditto, and Vieux Farka Touré for allowing us to use the music for this podcast. http://www.vieuxfarkatoure.com/ http://www.ccmixter.org/