Lithuanian Out Loud

Happy New Year!  Raminta and I hope that Sausis 2008 is starting off good for you.  Sausis is the Lithuanian word for the first month of the year.  In English we call this month January.  January comes from the ancient Roman God Janus.  Janus was the god of the doorway, so January is the door to the rest of the year.  Since Lithuania was never conquered by Rome and Lithuanian isn’t a Latin based language it makes sense Lithuanians have an entirely different system for naming months.  From now on, at the beginning of every episode we’ll try to remind you which month we’re in so you can learn the months of the year without even studying.  Sausas or sausa is an adjective that means, dry.  From a Lithuanian perspective, in winter the land is covered by snow, but it’s not wet, it’s frozen and very dry, so the first month in Lithuanian is called Sausis or the dry month. In November of 2007, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus was announced as the European of the Year for 2007 at a black tie dinner in Brussels.  The