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The Latvian language

The linguistic and cultural diversity is one of the world's greatest strengths and richnesses. Among more than 6700 languages of the world there is a language spoken by a nation along the Baltic Sea. It is the Latvian language, the state language of the Republic of Latvia.

Latvian is now a modern European language used by Latvians for all walks of life; it is the official State language in the Republic of Latvia and covers the most important sociolinguistic functions in multiethnic Latvian society.

There are about 1,4 million Latvian native speakers in Latvia; about 150 000 abroad. Latvian can even be considered the big language – there are only about 250 languages spoken by more than one million speakers in the world, Latvian among them. However, the language competition situation was always very hard for Latvian. The main languages in contact – German and Russian – are spoken by several tens or hundreds million of people and have status of international languages, and their speakers have dominated over Latvians politically. The maintenance of the Latvian language and culture could be called a wonder in itself.

Linguistic description

The Latvian language belongs to the Baltic group of the Indo-European family of languages. Its closest and only living relative is Lithuanian (Latvian is a non-Slavic and a non-Germanic language). Latvian has inherited a lot from the Indo-European proto-dialects, and as well as Lithuanian, it has preserved a lot of archaic features in its sound system and grammar.

Latvian	Lithuanian	Russian	German	English
bārda	barzda	[boroda]	der Bart	beard
cirvis	kirvis	[topor]	das Beil	axe
dārzs	daržas	[sad]	der Garten	garden
dzeltens	geltonas	[zhyolty]	gelb	yellow
dzintars	gintaras	[yantar]	der Bernstein	amber
mugura	nugara	[spina]	der Rücken	back
piens	pienas	[moloko]	die Milch	milk
slota	šluota	[metla]	der Besen	broom
zirnis	žirnis	[goroh]	die Erbse	pea

The Baltic tribes arrived in their present territory in the third millennium BC. The split between Latvian and Lithuanian proto-dialects took place in the sixth and seven centuries AD. The formation of the common Latvian language began during the 10-12^th centuries. Today traces of tribal dialects can be found in three main dialects and more than 500 vernaculars of the Latvian language, which exist along with the highly standardised form of Latvian.

Typologically Latvian is a fissional, inflectional language. Latvian nouns have 7 cases, verbs may inflect for tense, mood, voice and person. There is also a rich system of derivational affixes. The order of clause constituents is relatively free. The majority of speakers distinguish between two tones or intonations in long syllables. Latvian stresses the first syllable of each word and vowel length may occur in an unstressed syllable.

Latvian Script

The Latvian present alphabet consists of 33 letters:

a, ā, b, c, č, d, e, ē, f, g, ğ, h, i, ī, j, k, ķ, l, ļ, m, n, ņ, o, p, r, s, š, t, u, ū, v, z, ž.

The first written texts in Latvian appeared more than 400 years ago, and since then the 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. So-called phono-morphological principle is used in Latvian spelling up to now.

The spelling in the first printed books in the second half of the 16^th century was based on the Middle Low German spelling principles using the Gothic letters.

The Gothic letters were used up to the beginning of the 20^th century except for the books that were printed in eastern part of Latvia. In 1908 the new orthography was confirmed, replacing the Gothic letters with Roman ones and clusters of three or four consonant letters by one-letter spelling or diagraphs, making use of diacritics. Latvian marks length in vowels by a macron, thus a short vowel is unmarked, but a long vowel has a stroke above it.

Languages in contact

Since the consolidation of the Latvian nation, Latvians have always had direct contacts with other languages: Liv, Estonian, Lithuanian, Belorussian, Russian as neighbouring languages, with Russian, Polish, Swedish and German as languages of cultural exchange and official languages, with Latin as a language of religious ceremonies for Catholics. Language contact has been important factor in the development of Latvian lexicon and grammar. The Latvian language has also been influenced by neighbouring Finno-Ugric languages Liv and Estonian, by Lithuanian and by Russian. Since from the Middle Ages till early 20^th century the German language was the dominant language in education, science and administration, about 3000 German borrowings became part of Latvian vocabulary. During the last decades extensive borrowing from English takes place. Nevertheless, the impact of other languages is not as great as it might appear. It is largely due to activities of Latvian linguists in language standardisation.

The Latvian Language Standardisation

The Latvian language standardisation spontaneously existed already in the pre-written language period, i.e., until the 16^th century. When in the 17^th century the first Latvian norm sources appeared, one could talk about more or less conscious language standardisation.

The perpetrators of the first Latvian books were the Baltic German clergy who applied themselves methodically to the task of creating a written language, writing grammars and dictionaries of Latvian. The first printed text in Latvian appeared in 1525. The first books preserved till nowadays are "Catholic catechism" (1585), and "Evangelic Lutheran catechism" (1586). The first Latvian dictionary was published in 1638, the first grammar - in 1644 by German clergymen G.Manzelius and J.G.Rehehusen.

The middle of the 19^th century saw the rise of the National Awakening with the emergence of an interest for the language on the part of the Latvians themselves. Simultaneously, the status of the Baltic languages changed. Until then, Latvian had been regarded by the Baltic German nobility as a "rural language" in which lofty thought was impossible to express.

At the end of the 19^th century Latvians took over the research and standardisation of the Latvian language. Up to the second half of the 19^th century Latvian had become a highly standardised language, rich in press publications and belles-lettres. In the beginnings of linguistic theory, developing the typology of the Indo-European group of languages, it was gradually discovered that the Baltic languages provided some of the missing links to explain the relationship between Sanskrit and the classical languages (Greek and Latin) and the modern languages of the day.

Language	Saying
Latvian:	Dievs deva zobus, Dievs dos maizes donu
Lithuanian:	Dievas davë dantis, Dievas duos duonos
Sanskrit:	Devas adāt datas, Devas dāsyati dhānās
Russian:	[Bog dal zubi, Bog dast hlyeb]
German:	Gott gab die Zähne, Gott wird das Brot geben
Meaning in English:	God gave teeth, God will give bread

Thus the Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian and the extinct Old Prussian) became a focus of the research of the international community of professional linguists. Hence, the research of the first Latvian linguists of importance, Kārlis Mīlenbahs (1853-1916) and Jānis Endzelīns, (1873-1961) also became research of interest in an international forum.

Starting from 1918 when independence of a sovereign Latvian state was declared and up to the Soviet occupation in 1940 the Latvian language was formed into a well-developed multifunctional language with an established system of styles and developed terminology.

During the Soviet period for political reasons Latvian linguists could not affect the shrinking of the sociolinguistic functions of Latvian therefore the retention of language quality and even its perfection were set as major tasks. The Commission of Terminology of the Latvian Academy of Sciences had been active since 1946. Till 1990 it had published 15 terminological dictionaries and more than 50 bulletins in various fields of science and technology. Studies of Latvian were carried out, a two- volume grammar of the Modern Latvian language and eight-volume dictionary of the Standard Latvian had been compiled. Since 1965, a year-book on correct Latvian usage and a bulletin for journalists as well as a lot of monographic studies have been published.

After re-establishment of independence the Latvian Language Institute and departments at the University of Latvia, Pedagogical Academy in Liepāja and Pedagogical University in Daugavpils carry out the research of Latvian. Main research areas are: lexicography and dictionary compilation, grammar, dialectology and areal linguistics, sociolinguistics and terminology. Latvian is taught and studied in several universities throughout the world. The standardisation and codification of the Standard Latvian is carried out by the Latvian Language Expert Commission of the State Language Centre.

Sociolinguistic Situation of languages and language legislation in Latvia after World War II

During the Soviet occupation (1940-1941; 1945-1991) Latvian functioned in a situation of Latvian and Russian societal bilingualism – the language of governing state and bodies was Russian. Latvian was gradually ousted out from several spheres such as transport, banking, police, industry. Because of massive immigration the percentage of Latvian language users tends to decrease. In 1989 only 21% of representatives of other nationalities declared Latvian language skills while most of Latvians knew Russian. Although the number of speakers and decrease of sociolinguistic functions of Latvian never reached the critical stage of imminent language shift in Latvia, the preconditions for this had been attained.

In 1988 Latvian regained its status as the state language in Latvia. The 1989 Language Law (amendments in 1992) restored the place of Latvian in the national economy and in social life. After re-establishment of independence in 1991 changes have taken place in the language situation of Latvia. The main goal of language policy was integration of all inhabitants against the background of the official state language while protecting and developing the languages of Latvia's minorities. Recognising the problems inherent in the society, the Latvian government has embarked on government programmes for the teaching of Latvian. In the year 2000 about 75% of Latvia's minorities' language-speakers recognised to possess some Latvian language skills.

A number of minorities in Latvia enjoy bilingual education at government expense. These include Russian, Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, 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 integration into the life of the society and not be 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.

Considering the recent political and demographic processes in the region, Latvia and the other Baltic States are among countries where consistent implementation of reasonable language policy principles is essential for the maintenance of the language. The purposes of the present Law are: the preservation, protection and development of the Latvian language, the integration of national minorities in the society of Latvia while observing their rights to use their native or any other language.

© Text: Ina Druviete, Baiba Kangere, The Latvian Institute

© The Latvian Institute, 2004
This fact sheet can be freely printed from homepage of the Latvian Institute, distributed and cited, on condition that the Latvian Institute is acknowledged as the source. The Latvian Institute promotes knowledge about Latvia abroad. It produces publications, in several languages, on many aspects of Latvia.