Spoken in: Latvia.

Region: Northern Europe.

Total speakers: ~2 million.

Language family: Indo-European, Baltic, Eastern Baltic, Latvian.

Official status
Official language in: Latvia, European Union.

Regulated by: State Language Center.

Latvian (latviešu valoda), sometimes referred to as Lettish, is the official state language of the Republic of Latvia. There are about 1.5 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 200,000 abroad.

Latvian belongs to the Eastern Baltic sub-group of the Baltic language group in the Indo-European language family. Of the Baltic languages, only Latvian and its closest relative Lithuanian remain. However, while related, the Latvian and Lithuanian vocabularies vary greatly from each other and are not mutually intelligible.


Classification

Latvian is one of two living Baltic languages (with the other one being Lithuanian), a group of its own within the Indo-European language family. The Latvian and Lithuanian languages have retained many features of the nominal morphology of the proto-language, though in matters of phonology and verbal morphology they show many innovations, with Latvian being considerably more innovative than Lithuanian.


Dialects

There are three dialects in Latvian: the Livonian dialect, Latgalian and the Middle dialect. The Livonian dialect is divided into the Vidzeme variety and the Courland variety (also called tāmnieku or ventiņu). The Middle dialect, the basis of standard Latvian, is divided into the Vidzeme variety, the Curonian variety and the Semigallian variety. Note: Latvian dialects should not be confused with the Livonian, Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian languages.

Livonian dialect

The Livonian dialect of Latvian was more affected by the Livonian language substratum than Latvian in other parts of Latvia. There are two intonations in the Livonian dialect. In Courland short vowels in the endings of words are discarded, while long vowels are shortened. In all genders and numbers only one form of verb is used. Personal names in both genders are derived with endings - els, -ans. In prefixes ie is changed to e. Due to migration and the introduction of a standardised language this dialect has declined. It arose from assimilated Livonians, who started to speak in Latvian and assimilated Livonian grammar into Latvian.

Middle dialect

The Vidzeme variety and the Semigallian variety are closer to each other than to the Curonian variety, which is more archaic than the other two. There are three intonations in the Middle dialect. In the Semigallian variety, ŗ is still used.


Latvian grammar

Latvian is an inflecting language with many analytical forms. There are two grammatical genders in Latvian (masculine and feminine). Nouns decline into seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. Primary word stress, with a few exceptions, is on the first syllable.


Orthography

Historically, Latvian proper was written using a system based upon German phonetic principles and the Latgalian dialect was written using Polish orthographic principles. At the beginning of the 20th century, this was replaced by a more phonetically appropriate system, using a modified Latin alphabet.

Today, the Latvian standard alphabet consists of 33 letters:

A Ā B C Č D E Ē F G Ģ H I Ī J K Ķ L Ļ M N Ņ O P R S Š T U Ū V Z Ž
a ā b c č d e ē f g ģ h i ī j k ķ l ļ m n ņ o p r s š t u ū v z ž

The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet (all except Q, W, X and Y). It adds a further eleven letters by modification. The vowel letters A, E, I and U can take a macron to show length, unmodified letters being short. The letters C, S and Z, that in unmodified form are pronounced , and respectively, can be marked with a caron. These marked letters, Č, Š and Ž are pronounced , and respectively. The letters Ģ, Ķ, Ļ and Ņ are written with a cedilla or little 'comma' placed below (or above the lowercase g). They are modified (palatalized) versions of G, K, L and N and represent the sounds , , and . Non-standard varieties of Latvian add extra letters to this standard set.

Latvian spelling has almost perfect correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Every phoneme has its own letter so that a reader need not learn how a word is pronounced, but simply pronounce it. There are only three exceptions to this that could cause mispronunciation. The first is the letter E and its long variation Ē, which are used to write two sounds that represent the short and long versions of either or respectively. The letter O indicates both the short and long , and the diphthong . These three sounds are written as O, Ō and Uo in Latgalian, and some Latvians campaign for the adoption of this system in standard Latvian. However, the majority of Latvian linguists argue that o and ō are found only in loanwords, with the Uo sound being the only native Latvian phoneme. The digraph Uo was discarded in 1914, and the letter Ō has not been used in the official Latvian language since 1946. Likewise, the letters Ŗ and Ch were discarded in 1957, although they are still used in some varieties and by many Latvians living beyond the borders of Latvia. The letter Y is used only in the Latgalian language, where it is used to write a distinct phoneme that does not occur in other Latvian varieties. Latvian orthography consists of nine digraphs, which are written Ai, Au, Ei, Ie, Iu, Ui, Oj, Dz and Dž.

Old orthography

The old orthography was based on that of German and did not represent the Latvian language phonemically. At the beginning 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: there were as many as twelve variations of writing Š. In 1631 the German priest Georgs (Juris) Mancelis tried to systematize the writing. He wrote long vowels according to their position in the word — a short vowel followed by h for a radical vowel, a short vowel in the suffix and vowel with a diacritic mark in the ending indicating two different accents. Consonants were written following the example of German with multiple letters. The old orthography was used until the 20th century when it was slowly replaced by the modern orthography.

Latvian on computers

Lack of software support of diacritics has caused an unofficial style of orthography, often called translit, to emerge for use in situations when the user is unable to access Latvian diacritic marks in today's computerised media (e-mail, newsgroups, web user forums, chat, SMS etc.). It uses basic Modern Latin alphabet only, and letters that aren't used in standard orthography are usually omitted. In this style, diacritics are replaced by digraphs - a doubled letter indicates a long vowel; j indicates palatalisation of consonants, except for Š, Č and Ž that are indicated by using h. Sometimes the second letter, the one used instead of a diactric, 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. Sometimes an apostrophe is used before or after the character that would properly need to be diacriticised. There exists yet another style, sometimes called "Pokemonism" (In Latvian Internet slang "pokemon" is derogatory for adolescent), characterised by use of some elements of leet, use of non-Latvian letters (particularly w and x instead of v and ks), use of c instead of ts, use of z in endings, and use of mixed case. Also, digraph diacritics are often used and sometimes even mixed with diacriticised letters of standard orthography. Although today there is software support available, diacritic-less writing is still widespread because of financial and social reasons.

Standard QWERTY keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using dead key (usually ", occasionally ~). Some keyboard layouts use modifier key AltGr (most notable of such is windows 2000 and XP builtin layout (Latvian QWETRTY)). In the early 1990s, the Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout was developed. Although this layout may be available with language support software, it hasn't become popular because of a lack of keyboards with such layout.


History

The Baltic languages are of particular interest to linguists because they retain many archaic features believed to have been present in the early stages of the Proto-Indo-European language.

There is some evidence to suggest the existence of a Balto-Slavic language group after the break-up of Proto-Indo-European, with the Slavic and Baltic languages then splitting perhaps around the 10th century BC. However, this is disputed by many linguists, because the first inhabitants of Latvia appeared around 8000 BC, but Slavic tribes at the border of Latvia appeared only around 6th century AD. While the possession of many archaic features is undeniable, the exact manner by which the Baltic languages have developed from the Proto-Indo-European language is not clear.

According to some clotochronological speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from Western Baltic (or, perhaps, from the hypothetical proto-Baltic language) between 400 and 600. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800, with a long period of being one language but different dialects. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century, and perhaps as late as the 17th century.

Latvian emerged as a distinct language in the 16th century, having evolved from Latgalian and assimilating Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian on the way. All of these belong to the Baltic language group.

The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a hymn made by Nikolaus Ramm, a German pastor in Riga.

Until the 19th century, the Latvian language was heavily influenced by German language, because upper class of local society was formed by Baltic Germans. In middle of 19th century first Latvian National Awakening was started, led by “Young Latvians” who popularized use of Latvian language, participants of this movement laid foundations for standard Latvian and also popularized latvianization of loan words. However in 1880s when tsar Alexander III came into power, Russification started, during this period some Latvian scholars even suggested adopting the Cyrillic alphabet for use in Latvian. After the tsar's death, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, nationalist movements reemerged.

In 1908, Latvian linguists Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns elaborated the modern Latvian alphabet, which slowly replaced old orthography used before. Another interesting feature of the language, in common with its sister language Lithuanian, that was developed at the time is that proper names from other countries and languages, no matter how obscure, are altered phonetically to fit the phonological system of Latvian. Even if the original language also uses the Latin alphabet, this process takes place. Moreover the names are modified to ensure they have noun declension endings, declining like all other nouns. For example a place such as Lecropt (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village of Tillicoultry becomes Tilikutrija. This is a good example of linguistic purism in this ancient language.

During the years of Soviet occupation (1940–41 and 1945–91) the policy of Russification greatly affected the Latvian language. Through these two periods around 340,000 Latvians, along with other ethnicities, faced deportations and persecutions. A massive immigration from the Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and others followed, largely the result of Stalin's plan to integrate Latvia and the other Baltic republics into the Soviet Union by means of Russian colonisation. As a result, the proportion of the ethnic Latvian population within the total population was reduced from about 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. In the highly russified Soviet Latvia, most of the immigrants who settled in the country did not learn Latvian. Today, Latvian is the mother tongue of slightly over 60% of the country's population.

After the re-establishment of independence in 1991, a new policy of language education was introduced. The primary goal declared was the integration of all inhabitants into the environment of the official state language, while protecting the languages of Latvia's ethnic minorities. Some scholars have claimed that this strategy may be causing an overall decline of the Latvian language.

Government-funded bilingual education is available in primary schools for ethnic minorities. These include Russian, Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Estonian, and Roma schools. Latvian is taught as a second language in the initial stages so as to encourage proficiency in the language, aiming to avoid alienation from the Latvian-speaking linguistic majority and to facilitate academic and professional achievement. 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.) Due to these integration policies Russian-speaking pupils and students are now often taught in Latvian by teachers who are native speakers of Russian and who themselves have a very poor command of Latvian. This situation has caused protests from much of the Russian-speaking part of the population, as they claim that their children only have access to second-rate education due to these circumstances.

The Law on State Language was adopted on December 9, 1999. Several regulatory acts associated with this law have been adopted. The observance of the law is monitored by the State Language Centre run by the Ministry of Justice.

To counter the influence of Russian and English, government organizations (namely the Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Science and the State Language Center) try to popularize the use of Latvian terms and linguistic purism. Purism is often observed in the coining of new terms, which are usually disputed by the public — although purists have invented some euphonic words, many neologisms are widely seen as 'alien' and unnecessary, as pre-existing words could be used instead; for example, a heated debate arose when the Terminology Commission suggested that “eira”, with its 'latvianized' ending, would be a better term for euro than the widely used “eiro”. Other new terms are literal translations or new loanwords. For example, Latvian has two words for "telephone" – "tālrunis" and "telefons", the former being a direct translation into Latvian of the latter international term. Still others are older, more euphonic loanwords rather than Latvian words. For example, "computer" can be either "dators" or "kompjūters". Both are loanwords (the native Latvian word for 'computer' is "skaitļotājs"). However, for some time now “dators” has been considered an appropriate translation.

There are several contests held annually to promote correct use of Latvian. Notably, the State Language Center holds contests for language mistakes, named "Gimalajiešu superlācis" after an infamous incorrect translation of Asiatic Black Bear. These, often quite amusing, mistakes are both grammatical and stylistic; sometimes also obvious typos and mistranslations are considered to belong here. Organizers claim that mistakes are largely collected in areas heavily populated by Russians-speakers, as well as from Lithuanian-owned chain stores. Mistranslations are not necessarily grammatical, but also stylistic and vocabulary mistakes, such as literal translations from the English language.