Baltic Languages

Member of the Indo-European language family, now represented only by Lithuanian, Latvian, and some minor dialects. Lithuanian was first attested in a Protestant catechism of 1547, and Latvian in the Catechismus Catholicorum of 1585. The Baltic languages are of great linguistic interest for the archaic features they retain. Lithuanian, for example, has eight cases and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural).

Another member of the group, Old Prussian, known mainly from 802 words in the Elbing Glossary (probably dating from the 14th century), has been extinct since the 17th century.