The Lithuanian alphabet: 32 letters and how to read them

The Lithuanian alphabet has 32 Latin letters. It has no Q, W or X, but it adds a hook under four vowels (ą, ę, į, ų), a dot on ė, a bar on ū and a small v-shaped mark on č, š and ž. This guide goes through every letter with words checked in Wiktionary, so you can read a Lithuanian sign or menu on day one. To see where you stand, try the free Lithuanian level test.

Updated November 14, 2026 · 5 min read

Lithuanian at a glance

Article 14 of the Constitution of Lithuania is a single sentence: “Lithuanian shall be the State language.” Lithuanian is written in the Latin script, like its neighbour Polish — if you know Polish, the Polish level test shows how much carries over; Russian, by contrast, uses Cyrillic (see our Russian alphabet guide).

All 32 letters, in order

As Wiktionary lists them:

Two surprises for English readers: there is no Q, W or X, and Y comes right after Į, before J. In Lithuanian y is a vowel, a long i. Letters with marks follow their plain letter, so a dictionary lists čia after every word in plain c.

The four letters with a hook: ą, ę, į, ų

Lithuanian calls these letters nosinė: a nosinė, e nosinė and so on. In today's standard pronunciation, as Wiktionary transcribes it, each one is simply a long vowel:

Sources: the Wiktionary entries for each letter, e.g. ą. So į sounds like y, and ų like ū. Which letter a word uses is a matter of spelling and grammar, so learn words with their spelling.

Long y and ū, and the dotted ė

• y — called i ilgoji (“long i”), the 15th letter, /iː/ (Wiktionary: y). Example: knygà — book.
• ū — u ilgoji (“long u”), the 29th letter, /uː/. Examples: ãčiū [²ˈɑːt͡ʃʲu̟ː] — thank you; sū́ris — cheese.
• ė — the 9th letter, eː], a long closed e. [Wiktionary notes it was coined by Daniel Klein in 1653 for his Grammatica Litvanica. Examples: sáulė /ˈsɑuleː/ — sun; mėnùlis [mʲeːˈnʊlʲɪs] — moon.

Č, š and ž

Sounds from Wiktionary's transcriptions of these words (š also from its letter entry); the English comparisons are our own rough guides. Other Latin alphabets with marks on consonants are explained in our guides to Serbian's Latin alphabet and the Azerbaijani alphabet; learning Czech too? Try the Czech level test.

An i that softens instead of sounding

Look at Wiktionary's transcription of čià (here): ˈt͡ʃʲɛ]. There is no separate i vowel — the i marks the consonant before it as soft (the small ʲ), and the vowel heard is the one after it. The same happens in ãčiū [²ˈɑːt͡ʃʲu̟ː] (thank you, [Wiktionary: ačiū). When an i stands between a consonant and another vowel, check the transcription before you say it as a full syllable.

Vowel pairs: uo, ie, ai, au

• uo — one syllable gliding from u to o: vanduõ [ʋɐn²ˈduɔ] — water; dúona [¹ˈduɔnɐ] — bread; šuõ — dog.
• ai — as in taĩp [²ˈtɐɪˑp] — yes.
• au — as in sáulė /ˈsɑuleː/ — sun.
• ie — one syllable too, as in vi̇́enas (one) and Lietuvà (Lithuania).

Fourteen words to practise reading

All forms and meanings as in Wiktionary's Lithuanian entries. Read the left column aloud, using the letter rules above, then check yourself against the middle one.

Tips for reading Lithuanian

Our advice: learn the long vowels as two groups — y and į (long i), ū and ų (long u) — then add ą, ę and ė; read uo and ie as single syllables; and watch for the softening i. Set your keyboard to Lithuanian from the start so the marks never feel optional.

Thinking of living in the region? Our guides to Polish citizenship and the B1 certificate, how to pass the Polish certificate exam, the Czech A2 exam, Finnish citizenship and language exams for citizenship across Europe cover the neighbours. For a script with no Latin letters at all, see the Georgian alphabet or the Greek Certificate of Attainment guide; and for the language all these alphabets started from, where Latin lives today.

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