Some of the famous linguists of the XIX century has said something like "if you want to hear how the Proto_indoeuropean language " sounded you must go to Lithuania and hear how Lithuanina people speak. Thee is another common myth that Lithuanian is almost a dialect of Sanskrit :)) Now, as a native speaker of Lithuanian I can say that it is rubbish. These claism are very far from the truth. Why do you think those myths are being attached to my language? :))
UUPS! My typing is awful :((( Here is the corrected version :)
One of the famous linguists of the XIX century has said something like "if you want to hear how the Proto-Indoeuropean language sounded, you must go to Lithuania and hear how Lithuanian people speak. There is another common myth that Lithuanian is almost a dialect of Sanskrit :)) Now, as a native speaker of Lithuanian I can say that it is rubbish. These claims are very far from the truth. Why do you think those myths are being attached to my language? :))
Dear Vytenis:
I think the secret lies in: "you must go to Lithuania".
Since it was hardly possible anybody (apart the Lithuanians, of course) would follow such a piece of advice the famous linguist could say anything he wanted. Remember we were in the 19th century.
In case anybody should dare follow it, he clearly stated "Proto-Indoeuropean Sound" just to make sure nobody would. Everybody knows they ate their meat raw back in those times.
I trust you will forgive my Catalan sense of humour. ;-)
Lithuanian and Sanskrit both belong to the Satem branch of Indo-European which makes both of them closer related to each other than to any Indo-European languages belonging to the Centum branch: Celtic, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Italic, Latin etc. It is uncertain as to which branch of Indo-European the Germanic languages belong to (more likely Satem despite traditional Germanic anti-Slav sentiment) but even the Germanic languages have fewer features in common with Sanskrit than Lativian and Lithuanian or the Slavonic languages.
It is true that Lithuanian and Sanskrit are not mutually intelligible just as Greek and Armenian are not mutually intelligible. However, Sanskrit still remains one of its closer gentic relatives in much the same way Armenian (and Albanian) are the nearest genetic relatives of Greek.