Lietuvių · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Lithuanian
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
These are the keys you press, and in Lithuanian they produce the letters printed on them. The 4 characters beyond a-z in the practice words here come from a modifier or a dead key rather than a key of their own, so they are not shown here.
Learning to type in Lithuanian
Lithuanian uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 4 characters beyond a-z — ė, ž, š, ū.
Lithuanian (Lietuvių) is a Latin-script language with a tail. Twenty-six keys carry most of it, and then 29% of the practice words here reach past them for one of the 4 characters outside a-z: ė, ž, š and ū. Where those live depends on the layout you have selected; the guide shows a Latin QWERTY family arrangement.
Most people arrive at Lithuanian able to type and unable to type Lithuanian, which is a narrower problem than it feels. The letter keys are already done. What is left is a small number of positions, and the willingness to reach for them rather than paste them in.
Lithuanian's 89-word bank draws on 23 characters, and they are wildly unequal in how often they turn up — the commonest is about 16% of all letters typed, the rarest a fraction of one. The lessons follow that gradient deliberately, which is why the home row comes first and the awkward reaches come last.
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. The lessons come at it from the other end. Nothing is generated on the fly and nothing is padded: each drill is a fixed sequence of the keys that stage has introduced, in an order that starts at the two index fingers and works outwards to the keys you reach for least.
- 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.
The drills do not include ė, ž, š or ū. The beginner course builds each drill by remapping the keys through a language’s layout, and there is no key map for Latin QWERTY family yet — so these stages work through the plain a-z letters. The 4 characters Lithuanian needs beyond them appear in the speed test and the games, which draw on the word bank, and the keyboard guide above shows where they sit on the layout you have selected. It is one of the two things most worth fixing here; the other is that 2 languages have no layout map at all.
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. Your operating system already offers a layout that produces ė, ž, š and ū from the keys you have — through a dead key on some, a modifier such as right Alt on others. Which one depends on the language and on the layout you select; the hardware does not change either way.
Which Lithuanian keyboard layout do these lessons 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?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — written in the Latin QWERTY family layout. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 89 common Lithuanian words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
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.
Should I look at the keyboard while I learn?
No, and this is the one piece of advice worth being stubborn about. A glance down is not just a pause — it rehearses the habit of reading the keys instead of remembering them, which is precisely the habit the course exists to replace. Covering your hands for the first fortnight is unpleasant and works.
How often should I practise Lithuanian?
Briefly and often. What you are building is recall, and recall decays between sessions, so ten minutes on most days will take you considerably further than an hour once a week. Stop while it is still going well — practising past the point of fatigue rehearses sloppy motion.
Where should I start with Lithuanian?
At the beginning of the beginner course, even if you already touch type in another language. The nine stages start on the home row and add keys outward, and the early ones are short. If Lithuanian is a script you have never typed, the first stage is doing more work than it looks like — it is building the map, not the speed.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 89 Lithuanian practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Lithuanian: the speed test and typing games.
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.