Lithuania

2015

Commemorative coin

Lithuanian language

Official Journal of the European Union

The design shows the word ‘AČIŪ’(THANK YOU) — one of the most beautiful words in the Lithuanian language. An original Lithuanian font — created specially on the basis of the Latin font for the occasion of the centenary of the restoration of Lithuanian press — in order to match better the combinations of letters used most in the Lithuanian language, is used in the project. All the letters of the Lithuanian language are depicted on the background of the word ‘AČIŪ’, laid out in a tag cloud. At the bottom is the name of the issuing country ‘LIETUVA’ and underneath the name is the year ‘2015’. At the bottom right, under the word ‘AČIŪ’ is the mint mark of the Lithuanian Mint. The coin’s outer ring depicts the 12 stars of the European flag.

Additional information

The German linguist August Schleicher (1821-1868) recognised that Lithuanian is the most conservative, ancient living Indo-European language, highly reflective with grammatical forms that are partly found in Sanskrit or in other ancient languages - known in the German-speaking world as "Indo-Germanic" - such as ancient Greek or Latin. In 1861, he attempted to reconstruct the original language called "Protoindoeuropean" by including Lithuanian. In 1904, the ban on printing Lithuanian books in Latin letters - which had been undermined anyway by book smuggling from Prussia and the boycott of Lithuanian books in Cyrillic script - was lifted. The letters of the largely phonetic Lithuanian alphabet form the background of the coin design. The highlighted word "AČIŪ" means "thank you".

Edge lettering

Designer