Latvian language

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Latvian (latviešu valoda), sometimes also referred to as Lettish, is the official state language of the Republic of Latvia. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad.

Latvian belongs to the Eastern Baltic sub-group of the Baltic language group in the Indo-European language family, and it is neither Germanic nor Slavic. 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.

Latvian is an inflective language with several analytical forms, three dialects, and German syntactical influence. There are two grammatical genders in Latvian. Each noun is declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative.

History

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 number of hymns made by Nicholas Ramm, a German pastor in Riga.

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 language have retained many features of the nominal morphology of the proto-language, though in matters of phonology and verbal morphology they show many innovatiosn, with Latvian being somewhat more innovative than Lithuanian. The closest ties the Baltic languages have are with the Slavic and Germanic languages.

Orthography

Historically, Latvian was written using a system based upon German phonetic principles. At the beginning of the 20th century, this was replaced by a more phonetically appropriate system, using a modified Latin alphabet consisting of 33 letters. Latvian spelling has become one of the most perfect Latin script-based spelling systems in the world: Latvian graphemes correspond almost perfectly to the phonemes while observing the morphemic structure of the word.

The Latvian alphabet lacks the letters q, w, x, y, but uses letters modified by a number of diacritic marks:

A macron over the vowels a, e, i, u, signifying a long vowel (ā, ē, ī, ū, and historically also ō);
A caron over c, s and z, signifying palatalization (č, š, ž);
A comma under or over some consonants signifying a "palatal" variant (ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ, and historically also ŗ);

Ō is only used in the Letgallian dialect. It has not been used in the official Latvian language since the 1940s.

The diphthongs (ai, au, ei, ia, iu, ui, ua, oi) are written (ai, au, ei, ie, iu, ui, o, oj).

Every phoneme has its own letter (with the exception of dz and dž, which are nevertheless uniquely identifiable, and the two sounds written as e), so that you don't have to guess how to pronounce a word when you read it. The stress, with a few exceptions, is on the first syllable.

Language and politics

Latvia has had tumultous relationship with Germany, Sweden, Russia and Poland throughout history, and has always been a multicultural country. However during the years of Soviet occupation (1940-1941; 1945-1991) the policy of russification greatly impacted the Latvian language. Through these two periods around 340,000 Latvians — approximately one-third of the population — were deported and otherwise persecuted. Followed by a massive imigration from Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and others, the ethnic Latvian population was reduced from about 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. Most immigrants settled in the country without ever learning Latvian. Today Latvian is the mother tongue for only a little more than 60% of the country's population.

After re-establishment of independence in 1991 a new policy of language education was introduced. The primary goals now include integration of all inhabitants against the background of the official state language while protecting and developing the languages of Latvia's minorities. Some scholars believe that these programs may be contributing to the overall decline of the Latvian language.

True bilingual education at government expense (primary school only) is available for several minorities. These include Russian, Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Estonian, and Roma schools where Latvian is taught as a second language in the initial stages so as to encourage the attainment of competence in Latvian and ensure each resident of Latvia integrates into the life of the society and is not hindered by lack of proficiency in Latvian.

The Law on State Language was adopted on December 9, 1999. Several regulatory acts that refer to this Law have been adopted. The observance of the Law is monitored by the Ministry of Justice State Language Centre.

External links