GAME 01
Drift
Clear the sky
Words fall in gently and pick up speed. Type one, press space, watch it burst.
PLAY WITH PURPOSE · Lietuvių
Lithuanian typing games
Make repetition feel lighter. Three short games, all played in Lithuanian. Every 4 clean hits raises the level, and it never drops back. Scores are kept in this browser; signed in, a new personal best also goes to the leaderboard.
GAME 02
Orbit
Hold the ring
Characters circle the core. Strike each one before its arc runs out.
GAME 03
Signal
Beat the pulse
One word, one shrinking window. Keep the chain alive as the pulse quickens.
Practising Lithuanian with games
Lithuanian uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 4 characters beyond a-z — ė, ž, š, ū.
The awkward part of Lithuanian is not the alphabet, it is the 4 characters these practice words put outside it: ė, ž, š and ū. Whether your layout gives them a dedicated key or builds them from a modifier, the reach has to become a trained motion rather than a decision — they turn up in 29% of the practice words.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 89 common Lithuanian words — 23 distinct characters in all, averaging 5.3 written units per word. A round is short by design, two or three minutes at most, because the value of a game here is attention rather than endurance. The lessons are where the hours go; this is where you find out what has actually stuck.
The distribution is lopsided, which is the useful part. Across the 89 practice words, 23 distinct characters appear — and the single most common accounts for about 16% of every letter typed, with the top ten covering roughly 72%. Drilling the frequent ones first is where almost all of the benefit is.
The temptation in Lithuanian is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 89
- Distinct characters
- 23
- Average word
- 5.3 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Lithuanian practice words
- ė14
- ž8
- š5
- ū2
Counted across the 89 practice words. 29% of them need at least one.
ir yra kad su iš bet kai jau dar tik labai daugThe ogonek, and a number row full of letters
Lithuanian uses nine letters beyond the basic alphabet: ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū and ž. Four of them carry the ogonek, the small hook beneath a vowel, which historically marked nasalisation and now marks length.
The Lithuanian keyboard places those letters across the number row, as Czech does, so digits need a modifier. It is the same trade and the same complaint.
Lithuanian is remarkable for how much old Indo-European structure it has kept — its noun cases and sound system are closer to reconstructed Proto-Indo-European than any other living language — which has no bearing at all on typing it and is too interesting to leave out.
Questions about typing in Lithuanian
Do I need a Lithuanian keyboard?
No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — ė, ž, š and ū — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.
Does the difficulty ever stop rising?
There is a ceiling, and almost nobody meets it. In practice a round ends because the pace passed what you can hold rather than because the game ran out of levels — which is the intended shape, since a game that ends on a timer tells you nothing about your typing.
Will playing improve my Lithuanian typing?
It will improve your recall of keys you have already drilled, which is a real and specific benefit. It will not build the finger positions in the first place — pressure is a poor teacher and an excellent examiner. Use the lessons to learn a key and a game to find out whether you actually did.
Do the games use real Lithuanian words?
Yes — all three draw on the same bank of common Lithuanian words the speed test samples. Nothing is generated or transliterated for the sake of the game, so a score here means the same thing as a score there.
Which Lithuanian keyboard layout do these games use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 4 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 89 practice words between them use 23 of those 30, so 7 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Lithuanian?
89 of the most common words in Lithuanian, drawn at random. They use 23 distinct characters between them and average 5.3 written units each, with the longest running to about 9. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Lithuanian hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 29% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 4 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Lithuanian: lessons and the speed test.
Other languages written in Latin: Luxembourgish, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Norwegian, Polish. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- How to type fasterSix changes that raise typing speed, in the order worth making them. Most people's fastest gain is not typing faster — it is stopping mistakes.
- Average typing speedWhat the commonly quoted typing speeds are worth, where the famous 40 WPM figure came from, and how to find out where you actually stand.
- Typing postureMost posture advice is furniture marketing. The parts that matter are wrist angle, elbow height, screen height and how often you stop.