There is a terribly large quantity of russian words in modern Latvian. And a bit more curiously, many similarities between the grammar of the two languages.

Another very interesting thing is the language purism Latvian linguist advocate.. They invest so many new and, according to many Latvians, ridiculous words every year.. For instance an almost literal translation of "hotdog" was made last year or so. Suņdesainis is the word for it now (suns = dog, desa = sausage).. Those of you who haven't got English as your native language will understand how ridiculous it would be if anyone did that to your own languages!

The Lithuanian term is just dešrainis. No "dog" there!

We can attribute the loanwords to contact, and the similarities in grammar to both contact and common ancestry.
You mean the union with Poland?

That, too, but even before the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was established, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was already inhabited by many different Baltic & Slavic peoples.

My apologies. I had conflated the two historical entities.

There's no reason to apologize. I don't think many people learn about the history of Lithuania in North American history classes.

“Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos duonos” (Lithuanian)
“Devas adadāt datas; Devas dāt (or dadāt) dhānās” (Sanskrit)
“Deus dedit dentes; Deus dabit panem” (Latin)
“God gave the teeth; God will give bread”.


The village chief: (Lithuanian) vëšpatis, (Sanskrit) viç-pátih, (Avestan) vīs-patiş. For house: (Old Indic) dámas, (Latin) domus, (Greek) δόμος, (Old Bulgarian) domъ, (Lithuanian) namas.

(Sanskrit) vŕk-as tiśthati
(Lithuanian) vilk-as stóvi
(Latin) lup-us stat
the wolf stands