Latvian (latviešu valoda,pronounced[ˈlatviɛʃuˈvaluɔda]),[4] also known asLettish,[5] is anEast Baltic language belonging to theIndo-European language family. It is spoken in theBaltic region, and is the language of theLatvians. It is the official language ofLatvia as well as one of the official languages of theEuropean Union.[6] There are about 1.5 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and 100,000 abroad. Altogether, 2 million, or 80% of the population of Latvia, spoke Latvian in the 2000s, before the total number of inhabitants ofLatvia slipped to 1.8 million in 2022.[7] Of those, around 1.16 million or 62% of Latvia's population used it as their primary language at home, though excluding theLatgale andRiga regions it is spoken as a native language in villages and towns by over 90% of the population.[8][9][10]
Latvian belongs to theIndo-European language family. It is classified as a part of theBaltic branch of the family. It is one of two living Baltic languages with an official status, the other beingLithuanian. The Latvian and Lithuanian languages have retained many features of the nominal morphology ofProto-Indo-European, though their phonology and verbal morphology show many innovations (in other words, forms that did not exist in Proto-Indo-European),[14] with Latvian being considerably more innovative than Lithuanian. However, Latvian has mutual influences with theLivonian language.[15]
According to someglottochronological speculations, theEast Baltic languages split fromWest Baltic (or, perhaps, from the hypotheticalproto-Baltic language) between 400 and 600 CE.[16] The differentiation betweenLithuanian and Latvian started after 800 CE. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century, and perhaps as late as the 17th century.[17]
Latvian as a distinct language emerged over several centuries from the language spoken by the ancientLatgalians assimilating the languages of other neighboring Baltic tribes—Curonian,Semigallian, andSelonian—which resulted in these languages gradually losing their most distinct characteristics. This process of consolidation started in the 13th century after theLivonian Crusade and forcedchristianization, which formed a unified political, economic, and religious space inMedieval Livonia.[18]
The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a hymn made byNikolaus Ramm [lv], a German pastor inRiga.[19] The oldest preserved book in Latvian is a 1585 Catholic catechism ofPetrus Canisius currently located at theUppsala University Library[20] in Sweden.
Until the 19th century, the Latvian written language was influenced byGerman Lutheran pastors and theGerman language, becauseBaltic Germans formed the upper class of local society.[11] In the middle of the 19th centurythe First Latvian National Awakening was started, led by "Young Latvians" who popularized the use of Latvian language. Participants in this movement laid the foundations for standard Latvian and also popularized the Latvianization of loan words. However, in the 1880s, whenCzar Alexander III came into power,Russification started.
After the death of Alexander III at the end of the 19th century, Latvian nationalist movements re-emerged. In 1908, Latvian linguistsKārlis Mīlenbahs andJānis Endzelīns elaborated the modern Latvian alphabet, which slowly replaced the old orthography used before. Another feature of the language, in common with its sister language Lithuanian, that was developed at that time is that proper names from other countries and languages arealtered phonetically to fit the phonological system of Latvian, even if the original language also uses the Latin alphabet. Moreover, the names are modified to ensure that they have noun declension endings, declining like all other nouns. For example, a place such asLecropt (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village ofTillicoultry becomes Tilikutrija.
After theSoviet occupation of Latvia, the policy ofRussification greatly affected the Latvian language. At the same time, the use of Latvian among theLatvians in Russia had already dwindled after the so-called 1937–1938Latvian Operation of the NKVD, during which at least 16,573 ethnic Latvians and Latvian nationals were executed. In the 1941June deportation and the 1949Operation Priboi, tens of thousands of Latvians and other ethnicities were deported from Latvia. Massiveimmigration from theRussian SFSR,Ukrainian SSR,Byelorussian SSR, and otherrepublics of the Soviet Union followed, primarily as a result of Stalin's plan to integrate Latvia and the other Baltic republics into the Soviet Union throughcolonization. As a result, the proportion of the ethnic Latvian population within the total population was reduced from 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. In Soviet Latvia, most of the immigrants who settled in the country did not learn Latvian. According to the 2011census Latvian was the language spoken at home by 62% of the country's population.[8][9]
After the re-establishment of independence in 1991, a new policy of language education was introduced. The primary declared goal was the integration of all inhabitants into the environment of the official state language while protecting the languages of Latvia's ethnic minorities.[24]
Government-funded bilingual education was available in primary schools for ethnic minorities until 2019 when Parliament decided on educating only in Latvian. Minority schools are available forRussian,Yiddish,Polish,Lithuanian,Ukrainian,Belarusian,Estonian andRoma languages. Latvian is taught as a second language in the initial stages too, as is officially declared, to encourage proficiency in that language, aiming at avoiding alienation from the Latvian-speaking linguistic majority and for the sake of facilitating academic and professional achievements. Since the mid-1990s, the government may pay a student's tuition in public universities only provided that the instruction is in Latvian. Since 2004, the state mandates Latvian as the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Form 10–12) for at least 60% of class work (previously, a broad system of education in Russian existed).[25]
The Official Language Law was adopted on 9 December 1999.[26] Several regulatory acts associated with this law have been adopted. Observance of the law is monitored by theLatvian State Language Center run by the Ministry of Justice.
To counter the influence ofEnglish, government organizations (namely the Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Science and the State Language Center) popularize the use of Latvian terms. A debate arose over the Latvian term foreuro. The Terminology Commission suggestedeira oreirs, with their Latvianized and declinable ending, would be a better term foreuro than the widely usedeiro, whileEuropean Central Bank insisted that the original nameeuro be used in all languages.[27] New terms are Latvian derivatives,calques or new loanwords. For example, Latvian has two words for "telephone"—tālrunis andtelefons, the former being a direct translation into Latvian of the latter international term. Still, others are older or more euphonic loanwords rather than Latvian words. For example, "computer" can be eitherdators orkompjūters. Both are loanwords; the native Latvian word for "computer" isskaitļotājs, which is also an official term. However, nowdators has been considered an appropriate translation,skaitļotājs is also used.
There are several contests held annually to promote the correct use of Latvian. One of them is "Word of the year" (Gada vārds) organized by theRiga Latvian Society since 2003.[28] It features categories such as the "Best word", "Worst word", "Best saying" and "Word salad". In 2018 the wordzibmaksājums (instant payment) won the category of "Best word" andinfluenceris (influencer) won the category of "Worst word".[29] The word pair ofstraumēt (stream) andstraumēšana (streaming) were named the best words of 2017, whiletransporti as an unnecessary plural of the name fortransport was chosen as the worst word of 2017.[30]
There are threedialects in Latvian: the Livonic dialect, High Latvian and the Central dialect. Latvian dialects and their varieties should not be confused with theLivonian,Curonian,Semigallian andSelonian languages.
Geographical distribution of the dialects in Latvia. Varieties of the Livonic dialect (Lībiskais dialekts) are in blue, the Central dialect (Vidus dialekts) in green, the High Latvian dialect (Augšzemnieku dialekts) in yellow.The first geolinguistic map of the Latvian language (1891)
The Livonic dialect (also calledTamian ortāmnieku) of Latvian was more affected by theLivonian languagesubstratum than Latvian in other parts of Latvia. It is divided into theVidzemevariety and theCourland variety (also calledtāmnieku). There are two syllableintonations in the Livonic dialect, extended and broken. In the Livonic dialect, short vowels at the end of words are discarded, while long vowels are shortened. In all numbers, only one form of theverb is used. Due to migration and the introduction of a standardised language, this dialect has declined. It arose from assimilatedLivonians, who started to speak in Latvian.
The Central dialect spoken in central and Southwestern Latvia is the basis of standard Latvian. The dialect is divided into the Vidzeme variety, the Curonic variety and the Semigallic variety. The Vidzeme variety and the Semigallic variety are closer to each other than to the Curonic variety, which is more archaic than the other two. There are three syllable intonations in some parts of Vidzeme variety of the Central dialect, extended, broken and falling. The Curonic and Semigallic varieties have two syllable intonations, extended and broken, but some parts of the Vidzeme variety have extended and falling intonations. In the Curonic variety,ŗ is still used. TheKursenieki language, a historic variety of Latvian, which used to be spoken alongCuronian Spit, is closely related to the varieties of the Central dialect spoken inCourland.
High Latvian dialect is spoken in Eastern Latvia. It is set apart from the rest of the Latvian by a number of phonological differences. The dialect has two main varieties – Selonic (two syllable intonations, falling and rising) and Non-Selonic (falling and broken syllable intonations). There is astandard language, i.e., the Standard Latgalian, another historic variety of Latvian, which is based on deep non-Selonic varieties spoken in the south ofLatgale. The term "Latgalic" is sometimes also applied to all non-Selonic varieties or even the whole dialect. However, it is unclear if using the term for any varieties besides the standard language is accurate. While the term may refer to varieties spoken inLatgale or byLatgalians, not all speakers identify as speaking Latgalic; for example, speakers of deep Non-Selonic varieties inVidzeme explicitly deny speaking Latgalic.[31] It is spoken by approximately 15% of Latvia's population, but almost all of its speakers are also fluent in the standard Latvian language and they promote the dialect in popular culture in order to preserve their distinct culture.[10] The Latvian Government since 1990 has also taken measures to protect the dialect from extinction.[10]
The history of the Latvian language (see below) has placed it in a peculiar position for a language of its size, whereby many non-native speakers speak it compared to native speakers. The immigrant and minority population in Latvia is 700,000 people:Russians,Belarusians,Ukrainians,Poles, and others. The majority of immigrants settled in Latvia between 1940 and 1991;[citation needed] supplementing pre-existing ethnic minority communities (Latvian Germans,Latvian Jews,Latvian Russians). The trends show that the proficiency of Latvian among its non-native speakers is gradually increasing. In a 2009 survey by theLatvian Language Agency 56% percent of respondents with Russian as their native language described having a good knowledge of Latvian, whereas for the younger generation (from 17 to 25 years) the number was 64%.[32]
The increased adoption of Latvian by minorities was brought about by its status as the country's only official language and other changes in the society after thefall of the Soviet Union that mostly shifted linguistic focus away fromRussian. As an example, in 2007, universities and colleges for the first time received applications from prospective students who had a bilingual secondary education in schools for minorities. Fluency in Latvian is expected in a variety of professions and careers.
Latvian grammar represents a classic Indo-European (Baltic) system with well developed inflection and derivation. Word stress, with some exceptions in derivation and inflection, more often is on the firstsyllable. There are no articles in Latvian; definiteness is expressed by an inflection of adjectives. Basic word order in Latvian issubject–verb–object; however, word order is relatively free.
Latvian inLatin script was first based upon theGerman orthography, while the alphabet of the Standard Latgalian variety was based on thePolish orthography. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was replaced by a more phonologically consistent orthography.
The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet (all except⟨q, w, x, y⟩, which are usually replaced by⟨k(v)⟩,⟨v⟩,⟨ks⟩, and⟨i/j⟩ respectively in loanwords and even in foreign names, though they may appear in certain specialized terms such asstatus quo; "W" can be found in older texts, "Y" can be found in the Latgalian language/dialect). It adds a further eleven characters by modification. The vowel letters⟨a⟩,⟨e⟩,⟨i⟩ and⟨u⟩ can take amacron to show length, unmodified letters being short; these letters are not differentiated while sorting (e.g. in dictionaries). The letters⟨c⟩,⟨s⟩ and⟨z⟩ are pronounced[ts],[s] and[z] respectively, while when marked with acaron,⟨č, š, ž⟩, they are pronounced[tʃ],[ʃ] and[ʒ] respectively. The letters⟨ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ⟩, written with a comma placed underneath (or above them for lowercaseg), which indicatepalatalized versions of⟨g, k, l, n⟩ representing the sounds[ɟ],[c],[ʎ] and[ɲ]. Latvian orthography also contains nine digraphs, which are written⟨ai, au, ei, ie, iu, ui, oi, dz, dž⟩. Non-standard varieties of Latvian add extra letters to this standard set.
Latvian spelling has almost one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Everyphoneme corresponds to a letter so that the reader can almost always pronounce words by putting the letters together. There are only two exceptions to this consistency in the orthography: the letters⟨e, ē⟩ represent two different sounds:/ɛæ/ and/ɛːæː/. The second mismatch is that letter⟨o⟩ indicates both the short and long[ɔ], and thediphthong[uɔ]. These three sounds are written as⟨o⟩,⟨ō⟩ and⟨uo⟩ in StandardLatgalian, and some Latvians campaign for the adoption of this system in standard Latvian. However, Latvian grammarians argue that⟨o⟩ and⟨ō⟩ are found only in loanwords, with the/uɔ/ sound being the only native Latvian phoneme. The digraph⟨uo⟩ was discarded in 1914, and the letters⟨ō⟩ and⟨ŗ⟩ have not been used in the official Latvian language since 1946. Likewise, the digraph⟨ch⟩ was discarded in 1957, although⟨ō⟩,⟨ŗ⟩, and⟨ch⟩ are still used in some varieties and by many Latvians living beyond the borders of Latvia. The letter⟨y⟩ is used only in Standard Latgalian, where it represents/ɨ/, a sound not present in other dialects.
The oldorthography was based on German and did not represent the Latvian language phonemically. Initially, it was used to write religious texts for German priests to help them in their work with Latvians. The first writings in Latvian were chaotic: twelve variations for writingŠ existed, for example. In 1631 the German priestGeorg Mancelius tried to systematize the writing. He wrote long vowels according to their position in the word – a short vowel followed byh for a radical vowel, a short vowel in the suffix, and vowel with adiacritic mark in the ending indicating two accents. Consonants were written using multiple letters following the example of German. The old orthography was used until the 20th century when modern orthography slowly replaced it.
In late 1992, the official Latvian computing standard LVS 8-92 took effect. It was followed by LVS 24-93 (Latvian language support for computers) that also specified the way Latvian language (alphabet, numbers, currency, punctuation marks, date and time) should be represented on computers. A Latvian ergonomic keyboard standard LVS 23-93 was also announced several months later, but it did not gain popularity due to its need for a custom-built keyboard.[33]
Nowadays standardQWERTY or the US keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using adead key (usually ', occasionally ~).[33] Some keyboard layouts use themodifier keyAltGr (most notably the Windows 2000 and XP built-in layout (Latvian QWERTY), it is also default modifier in X11R6, thus a default in most Linux distributions).
In the 1990s, lack of software support of diacritics caused an unofficial style of orthography, often calledtranslits, to emerge for use in situations when the user is unable to access Latvian diacritic marks (e-mail, newsgroups, web user forums, chat,SMS etc.). It uses thebasic Modern Latin alphabet only, and letters that are not used in standard orthography are usually omitted. In this style, diacritics are replaced by digraphs – a doubled letter indicates a long vowel (as in Finnish and Estonian); a followingj indicates palatalisation of consonants, i.e., a cedilla; and the postalveolarsŠ,Č andŽ are written withh replacing theháček, as in English. Sometimes the second letter, the one used instead of a diacritic, is changed to one of two other diacritic letters (e.g. š is written as ss or sj, not sh), and since many people may find it difficult to use these unusual methods, they write without any indication of missing diacritic marks, or they use digraphing only if the diacritic mark in question would make a semantic difference.[34] Sometimes an apostrophe is used before or after the character that would properly need to be diacriticised. Also, digraph diacritics are often used and sometimes even mixed with diacritical letters of standard orthography. Although today there is software support available, diacritic-less writing is still sometimes used for financial and social reasons. Asš andž are part of theWindows-1252 coding, it is possible to input those two letters using anumerical keypad. Latvian language code for cmd and .bat files -Windows-1257
Consonants can be long (written as double consonants)mamma[ˈmamːa], or short. Plosives and fricatives occurring between two short vowels are lengthened:upe[ˈupːe]. Same with 'zs' that is pronounced as/sː/, šs and žs as/ʃː/.
/ɔɔː/, and the diphthongs involving it other than/uɔ/, are confined to loanwords.
Latvian also has 10diphthongs, four of which are only found in loanwords (/aiuiɛiauiɛuɔiu(ɔi)ɛu(ɔu)/), although some diphthongs are mostly limited to proper names and interjections.
Standard Latvian and, with some exceptions in derivation and inflection, all of the Latvian dialects have fixed initial stress. Long vowels and diphthongs have a tone,[clarification needed] regardless of their position in the word. This includes the so-called "mixed diphthongs" composed of a short vowel followed by asonorant.
During the period ofLivonia, manyMiddle Low German words such asamats (profession),dambis (dam),būvēt (to build) andbikses (trousers) were borrowed into Latvian, while the period ofSwedish Livonia brought loanwords likeskurstenis (chimney) fromSwedish.[36] It also has loanwords from theFinnic languages, mainly fromLivonian andEstonian.[37] There are about 500 to 600 borrowings from Finnic languages in Latvian, for example:māja ‘house’ (Liv.mōj),puika ‘boy’ (Liv.pūoga),pīlādzis ‘mountain ash’ (Liv.pī’lõg),sēne ‘mushroom’ (Liv.sēņ).[38]
Loanwords from other Baltic language includeķermenis (body) fromOld Prussian, as well asveikals (store) andpaģiras (hangover) fromLithuanian.[36]
The first Latvian dictionaryLettus compiled byGeorg Mancelius was published in 1638.[39]
The first grammar of the Latvian language is a short “Manual on the Latvian language” (Latin:Manuductio ad linguam lettonicam) byJohans Georgs Rehehūzens [lv], published in 1644 in Riga.[40]
Visi cilvēki piedzimst brīvi un vienlīdzīgi savā cieņā un tiesībās. Viņiem ir saprāts un sirdsapziņa, un viņiem citam pret citu jāizturas brālības garā.[41]
Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.[42]
^International Business Publications, Usa. (2008).Lithuania taxation laws and regulations handbook. Intl Business Pubns Usa. p. 28.ISBN978-1433080289.OCLC946497138.{{cite book}}:|last= has generic name (help)
^Viiding, Kristi (2004). "Das Porträt eines liv- und kurländischen orthodoxen Theologen (Georg Mancelius), anhand der ihm gewidmeten Geleit und Begrüßungsgedichte". In Sträter, Udo (ed.).Orthodoxie und Poesie (in German). Leipzig:Evangelische Verlagsanstalt.ISBN3-374-01997-8.
^Kabelka, J. (1982).Baltų filologijos įvadas: Vadovėlis respublikos aukštųjų mokyklų filologijos specialybės studentams [Introduction to Baltic Philology: A Textbook for Philology Students of Higher Education in the Republic] (in Latvian). Vilnius: Mokslas. p. 101.
Italics indicateextinct languages· Languages between parentheses arevarieties of the language on their left· Asterisk (*) indicatesdialects occasionally classified as languages· Question mark (?) indicates disputed classification.
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