This article is about the phonology of the Lithuanian language. Lithuanian has a phonemic inventory consisting of eleven vowels and 45 consonants, including 22 pairs of consonants distinguished by the presence or absence of palatalization.
Consonants[]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hard | soft | hard | soft | hard | soft | soft | hard | |||
| Nasal | m | mʲ | n | nʲ | ||||||
| Stop | voiceless | p | pʲ | t | tʲ | kʲ | k | |||
| voiced | b | bʲ | d | dʲ | ɡʲ | ɡ | ||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡sʲ | t͡ʃ | t͡ɕ | |||||
| voiced | d͡z | d͡zʲ | d͡ʒ | d͡ʑ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | (f) | (fʲ) | s | sʲ | ʃ | ɕ | (xʲ) | (x) | |
| voiced | v | vʲ | z | zʲ | ʒ | ʑ | j | (ɣʲ) | (ɣ) | |
| Approximant | ɫ | lʲ | ||||||||
| Trill | r | rʲ | ||||||||
Vowels[]
Lithuanian has six long vowels and five short ones (not including the disputed /e/). Length has traditionally been considered the distinctive feature, though short vowels are also more centralized and long vowels more peripheral:
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iː | ɪ | ʊ | uː | ||
| Mid | eː | ɛ, (e) | (ɔ) | oː | ||
| Open | æː | ɐ | aː | |||