Latvian language

The Latvian language (autoglottonym latviešu valoda) is the official language of the Republic of Latvia. This language has about 1.9 million native speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 outside the country.

Latvian is part of the eastern subgroup of Baltic languages, which in turn belongs to the Indo-European language family. The only living language that is closely related to Latvian is the Lithuanian language. However, even though they are related, the vocabulary of both languages varies considerably, which means that their speakers cannot understand each other. Both Baltic languages are considered to be the most archaic Indo-European languages spoken today.

Latvian is an inflectional language with several analytic forms, three dialects, and syntactically influenced by Germans. Furthermore, it has two grammatical genders. Like Lithuanian, each noun is declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative.

History

Latvian emerged as a distinct language during the 16th century, having evolved from Latgalian and having assimilated Curonian-speaking populations, semigallian and selonium. All of them belonged to the Baltic group of languages. The Latvian group and the Lithuanian group would have started to diverge around the 13th century, and for that reason the modern Latvian and modern Lithuanian are not mutually intelligible, although they retain many similarities.

The oldest sample of written Latvian dates from 1530. It is a translation of hymns by Nicholas Ramm.

Phonology

Consonants

Double consonants are geminated mamma [ˈmamːa]. Plosives and fricatives are geminated when they occur between short vowels upe [ˈupːe]. The same goes for zs (which is pronounced /sː/), šs and žs (/ʃː/).

Vowels

Latvian has six vowels, with a distinction between short and long.

/ɔ ɔː/ and diphthongs involving them in addition to /uɔ/ only appear in foreign words.

Latvian has ten diphthongs, of which four are only found in foreign words (/ai ui ɛi au iɛ uɔ iu (ɔi) ɛu (ɔu)/) or in proper nouns and interjections.

Pitch Accent

The stress almost always falls on the first syllable. Long vowels and diphthongs have tones regardless of syllable position. This includes so-called "mixed diphthongs", composed of a short vowel followed by a sonorant. The tones are level (high), falling, and broken.

Grammar

The Latvian language is a language with a rich morphology.

Examples of noun paradigms:

• First class male, draugs '

• Second class male, brālis Brother’

• Third class male, Tirgus immercated

• Fourth class male, akmens '

• First class female, osta 'puerto'

• Second class female, egle "abeto'

• Third-class female, Sirs heart'

• Fourth class female, iepirkšanās Buy‘

Spelling

Historically, Latvian was written using a system based on phonetic principles from German. At the beginning of the xx century that system was replaced by a more phonetically appropriate one, which uses a modification of the alphabet Latin with 33 letters. The Latvian orthography has become one of those that, using the Latin alphabet, more faithfully reproduces the pronunciation of the language.

Aa, Āā, Bb, Cc, Čč, Dd, Ee, Ēē, Ff, Gg, Ģģ, Hh, Ii, Īī, Jj, Kk, Ķķ, Ll, Ļļ, Mm, Nn, Ņņ, Oo, Pp, Rr, Ss, Šš, Tt, Uu, Ūū, Vv, Zz, Žž

The Latvian alphabet lacks the letters q, w, x, y, but uses letters modified by a series of diacritics:

• a pattern on the vowels a, e, i, uwhich marks the long vowels (ā, ē, ī, ū and historically also ō);
• a chariot over c, the s and the zwhich marks the palatalized consonants (č, š, žand
• a low coma or some consonants mark a «palatal» variety (▼, ., ., spanish and historically also ♫).

Ö is only used in the Letgalian dialect. It has not been used in official Latvian since the 1940s.

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

Each phoneme has its own letter (with the exception of dz and dž, and the two sounds written as e). The stress in the vast majority of cases occurs on the first syllable.

Language and politics

Percentage of Latvian-speaking families by municipalities in 2011. In the east and in the major cities there are a remarkable number of Russian speakers

Throughout its history Latvia has had a conflictive relationship with Germany, Sweden, Russia and Poland, always being a multicultural country. During Soviet times the policy of "Russification" had a considerable influence on the Latvian language. Throughout these two periods, according to some sources, some 340,000 Latvians were deported and persecuted. All this followed by massive immigration from other Soviet republics such as Russia, Ukraine or Belarus. The ethnic Latvian population that declined in Latvia was from 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. Most immigrants who settled in Latvia did not learn Latvian. Today Latvian is the mother tongue of about 60% of the country's population, of which nothing is really known.

After the restoration of independence in 1991, a new language policy was introduced. Currently the fundamental objective is to integrate all citizens regardless of their knowledge of the official language. Even so, a policy to protect minority languages is maintained. Some specialists think that these programs may contribute to the overall decline of Latvian. Minorities receiving publicly funded bilingual education are from Russian, Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Estonian communities, in which schools Latvian is taught as a second language in the early years to encourage the acquisition of proficiency in the official language and ensure their social integration.

The National Language Law was adopted on December 9, 1999. Several regulatory laws that refer to this law have also been adopted. The monitoring of compliance with this law is in the hands of the Ministry of Justice National Central of the Language.^{[citation required]}