Editing Ogonek (section)

===Length===
In Lithuanian, the '''nosinė''' (literally, "nasal") mark originally indicated vowel nasalization but around late 17th and early 18th century, nasal vowels gradually evolved into the corresponding [[long vowel|long]] non-nasal vowels in most dialects. Thus, the mark is now ''de facto'' an indicator of vowel length (the length of etymologically non-nasal vowels is marked differently or not marked at all). The mark also helps to distinguish different grammatical forms with otherwise the same written form (often with a different word stress, which is not indicated directly in the standard orthography).