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107-477: They likely spoke a variant of Latvian language , which probably became the lingua franca in present-day Latvia during the Northern Crusades due to their alliance with the crusaders. Latgalians later assimilated into the neighbouring tribes, forming the core of modern Latvians . The Latgalians were an Eastern Baltic tribe whose origin is little known. In the 5th and 6th centuries, they lived in

214-650: A caron , ⟨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 lowercase g ), which indicate palatalized 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. Every phoneme corresponds to

321-520: A dead key (usually ', occasionally ~). Some keyboard layouts use the modifier key AltGr (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 called translits , to emerge for use in situations when

428-486: A cedilla; and the postalveolars Š , Č and Ž are written with h replacing the háček , 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

535-405: A child, Kuldi Medne, born in 2020 is reported to be a native speaker of Livonian. Her parents are Livonian language revival activists Jānis Mednis and Renāte Medne. The Latvian Government continued attempts to preserve the dialect following the restoration of independence in 1990 and currently it is learned by some people as a hobby. The Central dialect spoken in central and Southwestern Latvia

642-933: 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 first syllable . There are no articles in Latvian; definiteness is expressed by an inflection of adjectives. Basic word order in Latvian is subject–verb–object ; however, word order is relatively free. There are two grammatical genders in Latvian (masculine and feminine) and two numbers , singular and plural. Nouns, adjectives, and declinable participles decline into seven cases: nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , instrumental , locative , and vocative . There are six declensions for nouns. There are three conjugation classes in Latvian. Verbs are conjugated for person, tense, mood and voice. Latvian in Latin script

749-468: A few (Western) Latgalian settlements have been excavated. Large-scale excavations (1960s–1970s) and reconstruction have been done at the Āraiši lake dwelling site (9th century). In Latgale, dating from the 6th and 7th centuries, there were flat cemeteries as well as barrow cemeteries. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the transition started from flat graves to barrows. There are about 15 excavated Eastern Latgalian barrow cemeteries, but in most of them only

856-458: A further eleven characters by modification. The vowel letters ⟨ a ⟩ , ⟨ e ⟩ , ⟨ i ⟩ and ⟨ u ⟩ can take a macron 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

963-478: 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; supplementing pre-existing ethnic minority communities ( Latvian Germans , Latvian Jews , Latvian Russians ). The trends show that

1070-603: 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: /ɛ æ/ and /ɛː æː/ . The second mismatch is that letter ⟨o⟩ indicates both the short and long [ɔ] , and the diphthong [uɔ] . These three sounds are written as ⟨o⟩ , ⟨ō⟩ and ⟨uo⟩ in Standard Latgalian , and some Latvians campaign for

1177-715: A movement which came into prominence in the mid-19th century, emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires: the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary , the Ottoman Empire , and Venice . Austro-Hungary envisioned its own political concept of Austro-Slavism , in opposition of Pan-Slavism that

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1284-751: A place such as Lecropt (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village of Tillicoultry becomes Tilikutrija. After the Soviet occupation of Latvia , the policy of Russification greatly affected the Latvian language. At the same time, the use of Latvian among the Latvians in Russia had already dwindled after the so-called 1937–1938 Latvian Operation of the NKVD , during which at least 16,573 ethnic Latvians and Latvian nationals were executed. In

1391-461: A radical vowel, a short vowel in the suffix, and vowel with a diacritic 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

1498-419: 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 2011 census Latvian was the language spoken at home by 62% of the country's population. After the re-establishment of independence in 1991, a new policy of language education

1605-541: A small number of barrows were investigated. Archaeologically-identified dwelling sites in Latgale include hill forts , settlements and lake dwellings . Among hillforts, the most well-researched one is Jersika Hillfort (excavated in 1939 and from 1990 onwards), forming a complex together with Dignāja Hillfort, on the opposite bank of the Daugava river. Jersika was occupied from the 10th to 14th centuries, probably after

1712-728: Is a standard language , i.e., the Standard Latgalian, another historic variety of Latvian, which is based on deep non-Selonic varieties spoken in the south of Latgale . 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 in Latgale or by Latgalians , not all speakers identify as speaking Latgalic, for example, speakers of deep Non-Selonic varieties in Vidzeme explicitly deny speaking Latgalic. It

1819-547: Is also no evidence of Asian admixture. However, samples of Novosibirsk residents and Old Believers in Siberia have 5-10% Central Siberian ancestry despite being genetically close to European Slavs. The pagan Slavic populations were Christianized between the 7th and 12th centuries. Orthodox Christianity is predominant among East and South Slavs, while Catholicism is predominant among West Slavs and some western South Slavs . The religious borders are largely comparable to

1926-408: Is defined as the last stage of the language preceding the geographical split of the historical Slavic languages . That language was uniform, and on the basis of borrowings from foreign languages and Slavic borrowings into other languages, it cannot be said to have any recognizable dialects, which suggests that there was, at one time, a relatively-small Proto-Slavic homeland . Slavic linguistic unity

2033-686: Is divided into the Vidzeme variety and the Courland variety (also called tāmnieku ). There are two syllable intonations 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 the verb is used. 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. Although initially its last native speaker, Grizelda Kristiņa , died in 2013,

2140-479: Is pronounced as /sː/ , šs and žs as /ʃː/ . Latvian has six vowels, with length as distinctive feature: /ɔ ɔː/ , and the diphthongs involving it other than /uɔ/ , are confined to loanwords. Latvian also has 10 diphthongs , four of which are only found in loanwords ( /ai ui ɛi au iɛ uɔ iu (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

2247-486: Is somewhat unusual, given such a wide dispersal of Slavic populations. Together they form the basis of the " East European " gene cluster , which also includes non-Slavic Hungarians and Aromanians . Only Northern Russians among East and West Slavs belong to a different, " Northern European " genetic cluster, along with Balts , Germanic and Baltic Finnic peoples (Northern Russian populations are very similar to Balts). The 2006 Y-DNA study results "suggest that

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2354-418: 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. The Latvian Government since 1990 has also taken measures to protect the dialect from extinction. The history of the Latvian language (see below) has placed it in a peculiar position for

2461-492: 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,

2568-728: 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

2675-730: Is the most spoken Slavic language, and is the most spoken native language in Europe. The alphabets used for Slavic languages are usually connected to the dominant religion among the respective ethnic groups. Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic alphabet while Catholics use the Latin alphabet ; the Bosniaks, who are Muslim, also use the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet in Serbia. Additionally, some Eastern Catholics and Western Catholics use

2782-566: The Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . Present-day Slavs are classified into three groups: Though the majority of Slavs are Christians , some groups, such as the Bosniaks, mostly identify as Muslims . Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse, both genetically and culturally, and relations between them may range from "ethnic solidarity to mutual feelings of hostility" — even within

2889-721: The Boii ), Old Prussians , and the Pannonian Avars . The West Slavs came under the influence of the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and of the Catholic Church . East Slavs have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed and contacted with Finns , Balts and with the remnants of the people of the Goths . Their early Slavic component, Antes , mixed or absorbed Iranians , and later received influence from

2996-714: The Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of Bosnia , and West Slavs in the Principality of Nitra , Great Moravia , the Duchy of Bohemia , and the Kingdom of Poland . Beginning in the mid-19th century, a pan-Slavic movement has emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus of the movement was in the Balkans, whereas the Russian Empire was opposed to it. The Slavic languages belong to

3103-458: The East–West Schism which began in the 11th century. Islam first arrived in the 7th century during the early Muslim conquests , and was gradually adopted by a number of Slavic ethnic groups through the centuries in the Balkans. Among Slavic populations who profess a religion, the majority of contemporary Christian Slavs are Orthodox, followed by Catholic. The majority of Muslim Slavs follow

3210-484: The Governorate of Courland and 563,829 (43.4%) speakers of Latvian in the Governorate of Livonia , making Latvian-speakers the largest linguistic group in each of the governorates. After the death of Alexander III at the end of the 19th century, Latvian nationalist movements re-emerged. In 1908, Latvian linguists Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns elaborated the modern Latvian alphabet, which slowly replaced

3317-554: The Hanafi school of the Sunni branch of Islam. Religious delineations by nationality can be very sharp; usually in the Slavic ethnic groups, the vast majority of religious people share the same religion. Mainly Eastern Orthodoxy : Mainly Catholicism : Mainly Islam : Throughout their history, Slavs came into contact with non-Slavic groups. In the postulated homeland region (present-day Ukraine ), they had contacts with

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3424-559: The Hunger Plan , Germany's intentional starvation of the region, as well as the murders of 3.3. million Soviet prisoners of war . Germany's Heinrich Himmler also ordered his subordinate Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben to start repopulating Crimea , and hundreds of ethnic Germans were forcibly moved to cities and villages there. The Soviet Red Army took back their land from the Germans in 1944 . Stephen J. Lee estimates that, by

3531-691: The Khazars and Vikings . The East Slavs trace their national origins to the tribal unions of Kievan Rus' and Rus' Khaganate , beginning in the 10th century. They came particularly under the influence of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church . South Slavs from most of the region have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with the local Proto-Balkanic tribes ( Illyrian , Dacian , Thracian , Paeonian , Hellenic tribes ), and Celtic tribes (particularly

3638-681: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes . The first half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a succession of wars, famines and other disasters, each accompanied by large-scale population losses. The two major famines were in 1921 to 1923 and 1932 to 1933 , which caused millions of deaths mostly around Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus . The latter resulted from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 's collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine . During

3745-643: The Latgale and Riga regions it is spoken as a native language in villages and towns by over 90% of the population. As a Baltic language , Latvian is most closely related to neighboring Lithuanian (as well as Old Prussian , an extinct Baltic language); however, Latvian has followed a more rapid development. In addition, there is some disagreement whether Standard Latgalian and Kursenieki , which are mutually intelligible with Latvian, should be considered varieties or separate languages . However, in Latvian linguistics, such hypotheses have been rejected as non-scientific. Latvian first appeared in print in

3852-882: The Peloponnese and Asia Minor being reported to have Slavic settlements. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion. By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions . Pope Gregory I in 600 AD wrote to Maximus, the bishop of Salona (in Dalmatia ), expressing concern about the arrival of the Slavs: Latin: " Et quidem de Sclavorum gente, quae vobis valde imminet, et affligor vehementer et conturbor. Affligor in his quae jam in vobis patior; conturbor, quia per Istriae aditum jam ad Italiam intrare coeperunt. " English: "I am both distressed and disturbed about

3959-569: The Prague -type pottery associated with Slavs was not found anywhere south of the Danube where large numbers of Slavic-speaking people emerged in the early Middle Ages. Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in large numbers. Byzantine records note that Slav numbers were so great, that grass would not regrow where the Slavs had marched through . Military movements resulted in even

4066-533: The Roman world, Slavic -speaking tribes formed part of several successive multi-ethnic confederacies of Eurasia – such as the Sarmatian, Hun and Gothic empires. The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries AD (thought to be in conjunction with the movement of peoples from Siberia and Eastern Europe: Huns , and later Avars and Bulgars ) started

4173-625: The Scordisci ), as well as with Romans (and the Romanized remnants of the former groups), and also with remnants of temporarily settled invading East Germanic, Asiatic or Caucasian tribes such as Gepids , Huns , Avars , Goths and Bulgars . The original inhabitants of present-day Slovenia and continental Croatia have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with Romans and romanized Celtic and Illyrian people as well as with Avars and Germanic peoples (Lombards and East Goths). The South Slavs (except

4280-614: The Uppsala University Library . The first person to translate the Bible into Latvian was the German Lutheran pastor Johann Ernst Glück ( The New Testament in 1685 and The Old Testament in 1691). The Lutheran pastor Gotthard Friedrich Stender was a founder of Latvian secular literature. He wrote the first illustrated Latvian alphabet book (1787), the first encyclopedia " The Book of High Wisdom of

4387-590: The Vandals to the Iberian Peninsula and even to North Africa . On the other hand, historian Florin Curta categorically dismisses the concept of "Slavs' migration" and opts instead for short-distance population movements that would explain the spread of Slavic languages . He argues - in favor of this view - that the proposed migration models are inconsistent with the archaeological findings, for example

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4494-749: The Windows-1252 coding, it is possible to input those two letters using a numerical keypad . Latvian language code for cmd and .bat files - Windows-1257 For example, the Lord's Prayer in Latvian written in different styles: Consonants in consonant sequences assimilate to the voicing of the subsequent consonant , e.g. a p gabals [ˈa b ɡabals] or la b s [ˈla p s] . Latvian does not feature final-obstruent devoicing . 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

4601-719: The great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes who had fled from the Huns and their allies. Slavs, according to this account, moved westward into the country between the Oder and the Elbe - Saale line; southward into Bohemia , Moravia , much of present-day Austria , the Pannonian plain and the Balkans ; and northward along the upper Dnieper river. It has also been suggested that some Slavs migrated with

4708-407: The "Best word", "Worst word", "Best saying" and " Word salad ". In 2018 the word zibmaksājums ( instant payment ) won the category of "Best word" and influenceris ( influencer ) won the category of "Worst word". The word pair of straumēt ( stream ) and straumēšana (streaming) were named the best words of 2017, while transporti as an unnecessary plural of the name for transport

4815-458: The "Roman" Iron Age (1st to 4th centuries). Latvian language Latvian ( endonym : latviešu valoda , pronounced [ˈlatviɛʃu ˈvaluɔda] ), also known as Lettish , is an East Baltic language belonging to the Indo-European language family and it is spoken in the Baltic region . It is the language of Latvians and the official language of Latvia as well as one of

4922-645: The 11th century, Eastern Orthodoxy started to spread in Latgalian lands from Polotsk and Pskov . In the 12th century, Latgalian lands and their rulers paid tribute to the dukes of Polotsk. During the Livonian crusade in the 13th century, Latgalian elders switched from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and became vassals of the Livonian Order . Because of the crusade, many regions of Semigallia and Courland were left depopulated. Thus, part of

5029-586: The 12th century. Ērgļu Jaunāķēni Cemetery was totally excavated in 1971–1972, with 89 burials found. At Koknese Cemetery, 102 burials from the Late Iron Age were uncovered (1986–1989). In the area of the Gauja river, two Latgalian cemeteries, Drabešu Liepiņas and Priekuļu Ģūģeri, have been excavated too. Archaeological excavations have also been carried out on the hillforts of Ķente, Koknese , Sārumkalns, Tanīskalns, as well as on other Latgalian sites. Only

5136-614: The 13th century after the Livonian Crusade and forced christianization , which formed a unified political, economic, and religious space in Medieval Livonia . The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a hymn made by Nikolaus Ramm  [ lv ] , a German pastor in Riga . The oldest preserved book in Latvian is a 1585 Catholic catechism of Petrus Canisius currently located at

5243-469: The 1941 June deportation and the 1949 Operation Priboi , tens of thousands of Latvians and other ethnicities were deported from Latvia. Massive immigration from Russian SFSR , Ukrainian SSR , Byelorussian SSR , and other republics 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 through colonization . As

5350-545: The 5th to the 10th century AD), and came to control large parts of Central , Eastern , and Southeast Europe between the sixth and seventh centuries. Beginning in the 7th century, they were gradually Christianized . By the 12th century, they formed the core population of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus' , South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire , the Principality of Serbia ,

5457-479: The 9th century, attest the autonym as Slověne ( Словѣне ). Those forms point back to a Slavic autonym , which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ , plural Slověne . The reconstructed autonym * Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo ("word"), originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)", meaning "people who understand one another", in contrast to

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5564-456: The Balkans were Slavicized. Thracians and Illyrians mixed as ethnic groups in this period. A notable exception is Greece, where Slavs were Hellenized because Greeks were more numerous, especially with more Greeks returning to Greece in the 9th century and the influence of the church and administration, however, Slavicized regions within Macedonia , Thrace and Moesia Inferior also had

5671-746: The Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian and Montenegrin use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin script to write in Belarusian, called Łacinka and in Ukrainian, called Latynka . West Slavs originate from early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after the East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period . They are noted as having mixed with Germanics , Hungarians , Celts (particularly

5778-492: The Iranian Sarmatians and the Germanic Goths . After their subsequent spread, the Slavs began assimilating non-Slavic peoples. For example, in the Northern Black Sea region, the Slavs assimilated the remnants of the Goths. In the Balkans, there were Paleo-Balkan peoples, such as Romanized and Hellenized ( Jireček Line ) Illyrians , Thracians and Dacians , as well as Greeks and Celtic Scordisci and Serdi . Because Slavs were so numerous, most indigenous populations of

5885-628: The Latgalians migrated to those regions both during and after the war. Subsequently, between the 13th and 16th centuries, they gradually assimilated into the other Baltic tribes: the Selonians , the Semigallians and the Curonians . These formed the core of present-day ethnic Latvians . In the lands inhabited by Western and the Eastern Latgalians, about 80 flat cemeteries of Western Latgalian origin have been excavated, with more than two thousand burials uncovered. The first large scale excavations took place in Ludza Odukalns Cemetery in Latgale (1890–1891), where 339 Late Iron Age burials were uncovered. In

5992-417: The Latvian dialects have fixed initial stress. Long vowels and diphthongs have a tone, regardless of their position in the word. This includes the so-called "mixed diphthongs" composed of a short vowel followed by a sonorant . During the period of Livonia , many Middle Low German words such as amats (profession), dambis (dam), būvēt (to build) and bikses (trousers) were borrowed into Latvian, while

6099-401: 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 of writing Š . In 1631 the German priest Georg Mancelius tried to systematize the writing. He wrote long vowels according to their position in the word – a short vowel followed by h for

6206-422: The Ministry of Justice. To counter the influence of English , 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 for euro . The Terminology Commission suggested eira or eirs , with their Latvianized and declinable ending, would be a better term for euro than

6313-600: The Sclaveni as having swamps and forests for their cities. Another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly-impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes. Menander Protector mentions Daurentius ( r.  c. 577 – 579 ) who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars; Daurentius declined and is reported as saying: "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs – so it shall always be for us as long as there are wars and weapons". According to eastern homeland theory, prior to becoming known to

6420-434: The Slavic expansion started from the territory of present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the hypothesis placing the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the basin of the middle Dnieper ". According to genetic studies until 2020, the distribution, variance and frequency of the Y-DNA haplogroups R1a and I2 and their subclades R-M558, R-M458 and I-CTS10228 among South Slavs correlate with the spread of Slavic languages during

6527-566: The Slavic word denoting " German people ", namely *němьcь , meaning "silent, mute people" (from Slavic *němъ " mute , mumbling"). The word slovo ("word") and the related slava ("glory, fame") and sluh ("hearing") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew- ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek κλέος ( kléos "fame"), as in the name Pericles , Latin clueō ("be called"), and English loud . In medieval and early modern sources written in Latin, Slavs are most commonly referred to as Sclaveni or

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6634-436: The Slavs, who are pressing hard on you. I am distressed because I sympathize with you; I am disturbed because they have already begun to arrive in Italy through the entry-point of Istria ." When Slav migrations ended, their first state organizations appeared, each headed by a prince with a treasury and a defense force. In the 7th century, the Frankish merchant Samo supported the Slavs against their Avar rulers and became

6741-679: The Slovenes and Croats) came under the cultural sphere of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), of the Ottoman Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Islam , while the Slovenes and the Croats were influenced by the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and thus by the Catholic Church in a similar fashion to that of the West Slavs. Consistent with the proximity of their languages, analyses of Y chromosomes , mDNA , and autosomal marker CCR5de132 shows that East Slavs and West Slavs are genetically very similar, but demonstrating significant differences from neighboring Finno-Ugric, Turkic , and North Caucasian peoples. Such genetic homogeneity

6848-581: The Vidzeme variety has extended and falling intonations. In the Curonic variety, ŗ is still used. The Kursenieki language , a historic variety of Latvian, which used to be spoken along Curonian Spit , is closely related to the varieties of the Central dialect spoken in Courland . 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

6955-435: The World and Nature  [ lv ] " ( Augstas gudrības grāmata no pasaules un dabas ; 1774), grammar books and Latvian–German and German–Latvian dictionaries. Until the 19th century, the Latvian written language was influenced by German Lutheran pastors and the German language , because Baltic Germans formed the upper class of local society. In the middle of the 19th century the First Latvian National Awakening

7062-412: 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,

7169-409: The affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , were calling for national self-determination. During World War I , representatives of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. In 1918, after World War I ended, the Slavs established such independent states as Czechoslovakia , the Second Polish Republic , and

7276-449: The country's only official language and other changes in the society after the fall of the Soviet Union that mostly shifted linguistic focus away from Russian . 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

7383-480: The decline of Dignāja, which had been inhabited since the 6th century. It is possible that ancestors of the so-called Eastern Latgalians migrated to the territory of present-day Latgale between the 7th and 11th centuries, pushed from their previously inhabited territory by Slavic migrations ; some archaeologists also believe that the Eastern Latgalians are descended from the more ancient East-Baltic inhabitants of Latvia, who lived in central and eastern Latvia during

7490-448: 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. 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. As š and ž are part of

7597-423: 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 old orthography was based on German and did not represent

7704-599: The eastern part of present-day Vidzeme (west of the Aiviekste River ), and later on in nearly all the territory of that region. In written sources, they are mentioned from the 11th century onward. In the first two decades of the 13th century, the (Western) Latgalians allied with German (mainly Saxon) crusaders . Their lands (the Eldership of Tālava , the Principality of Jersika and the Principality of Koknese ) were incorporated into Livonia as vassal states. In

7811-733: The end of World War II in 1945, the Russian population was about 90 million fewer than it could have been otherwise. Also during World War II, fascist Italy sent tens of thousands of Slavs to concentration camps in mainland Italy, Libya , and the Balkans , because Italian leader Benito Mussolini also had a hatred of them. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed , and many former Soviet republics became independent countries. Currently, former Soviet states in Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have very large minority Slavic populations, with most being Russians. Kazakhstan has

7918-742: The era of the emperor Justinian I ( r.  527–565 ), such as Procopius of Caesarea , Jordanes and Theophylact Simocatta , describe tribes of these names emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains , the lower Danube and the Black Sea to invade the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire . Jordanes, in his work Getica (written in 551 AD), describes the Veneti as a "populous nation" whose dwellings begin at

8025-594: The excavations at Pildas Nukši Cemetery (in Latgale, 1947–1948), 218 burials were uncovered, dated to the 9th to 12th centuries. At the Zvirgzdenes Kivti Cemetery (in Latgale: 1948, 1955–1958), 175 burials from the 7th to 12th centuries were excavated. 315 burials were found at Aglonas Kristapiņi Cemetery (in Latgale; 1928, 1938, 1977–1980, 1984–1987, 1999–2000), in use from the late 8th century to

8132-617: The hypothetical proto-Baltic language ) between 400 and 600 CE. The differentiation between Lithuanian 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. Latvian as a distinct language emerged over several centuries from the language spoken by the ancient Latgalians assimilating the languages of other neighboring Baltic tribes— Curonian , Semigallian , and Selonian —which resulted in these languages gradually losing their most distinct characteristics. This process of consolidation started in

8239-640: The individual groups. The oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is from the 6th century AD, when Procopius , writing in Byzantine Greek , used various forms such as Sklaboi ( Σκλάβοι ), Sklabēnoi ( Σκλαβηνοί ), Sklauenoi ( Σκλαυηνοί ), Sthlabenoi ( Σθλαβηνοί ), or Sklabinoi ( Σκλαβῖνοι ), and his contemporary Jordanes refers to the Sclaveni in Latin . The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic , dating from

8346-576: The largest Slavic minority population. Proto-Slavic , the supposed ancestor language of all Slavic languages, is a descendant of common Proto-Indo-European , via a Balto-Slavic stage in which it developed numerous lexical and morphophonological isoglosses with the Baltic languages . In the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis , "the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations [from the steppe] became speakers of Balto-Slavic". Proto-Slavic

8453-476: The medieval Slavic expansion from Eastern Europe, most probably from the territory of present-day Ukraine and Southeastern Poland . According to a 2017 study, Slavic speakers like Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians have similar genetic components. Ukrainians and Belarusians have near-equal amounts of two "European components", which are commonly found in North Europe and Caucasus respectively. There

8560-514: The mid-16th century with the reproduction of the Lord's Prayer in Latvian in Sebastian Münster 's Cosmographia universalis (1544), in Latin script . Latvian belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is classified as a part of the Baltic branch of the family. It is one of two living Baltic languages with an official status, the other being Lithuanian . The Latvian and Lithuanian languages have retained many features of

8667-484: The native Latvian word for "computer" is skaitļotājs , which is also an official term. However, now dators 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 the Riga Latvian Society since 2003. It features categories such as

8774-577: The nominal morphology of Proto-Indo-European , though their phonology and verbal morphology show many innovations (in other words, forms that did not exist in Proto-Indo-European), with Latvian being considerably more innovative than Lithuanian. However, Latvian has mutual influences with the Livonian language . According to some glottochronological speculations, the East Baltic languages split from West Baltic (or, perhaps, from

8881-621: The northern parts of Eurasia ; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe , Eastern Europe , Southeastern Europe , and Northern Asia , though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia , and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas , Western Europe , and Northern Europe . Early Slavs lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from

8988-484: The official languages of the European Union . 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 of Latvia slipped to 1.8 million in 2022. Of those, around 1.16 million or 62% of Latvia's population used it as their primary language at home, though excluding

9095-458: 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 are altered 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,

9202-686: The period of Swedish Livonia brought loanwords like skurstenis (chimney) from Swedish . It also has loanwords from the Finnic languages , mainly from Livonian and Estonian . 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 ). Loanwords from other Baltic language include ķermenis (body) from Old Prussian , as well as veikals (store) and paģiras (hangover) from Lithuanian . The first Latvian dictionary Lettus compiled by Georg Mancelius

9309-480: The proficiency of Latvian among its non-native speakers is gradually increasing. In a 2009 survey by the Latvian 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%. The increased adoption of Latvian by minorities was brought about by its status as

9416-608: The ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe, Samo's Empire . This early Slavic polity probably did not outlive its founder and ruler, but it was the foundation for later West Slavic states on its territory. The oldest of them was Carantania ; others are the Principality of Nitra , the Moravian principality (see under Great Moravia ) and the Balaton Principality . The First Bulgarian Empire

9523-692: The shortened version Sclavi . Ancient Roman sources refer to the Early Slavic peoples as "Veneti" , who dwelt in a region of central Europe east of the Germanic tribe of Suebi and west of the Iranian Sarmatians in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, between the upper Vistula and Dnieper rivers. Slavs - called Antes and Sclaveni - first appear in Byzantine records in the early 6th century AD. Byzantine historiographers of

9630-974: The sources of the Vistula and occupy "a great expanse of land". He also describes the Veneti as the ancestors of Antes and Slaveni, two early Slavic tribes, who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early-6th century. Procopius wrote in 545 that "the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called Sporoi in olden times". The name Sporoi derives from Greek σπείρω ("to sow "). He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy and believed in one god, "the maker of lightning" ( Perun ), to whom they made sacrifice. They lived in scattered housing and constantly changed settlement. In war, they were mainly foot soldiers with shields, spears, bows, and little armour, which

9737-487: The start of World War II was to exterminate, expel, or enslave most or all West and East Slavs from their native lands, so as to make " living space " for German settlers. In early 1941, Germany began planning Generalplan Ost , the genocide of Slavs in Eastern Europe which was supposed to start after a major expansion of German concentration camps in occupied Poland and the fall of Stalin's regime. This plan

9844-485: 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). The Official Language Law was adopted on 9 December 1999. Several regulatory acts associated with this law have been adopted. Observance of the law is monitored by the Latvian State Language Center run by

9951-477: The user is unable to access Latvian diacritic marks (e-mail, newsgroups, web user forums, chat, SMS etc.). It uses the basic 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 following j indicates palatalisation of consonants, i.e.,

10058-428: The war, Nazi Germany used hundreds of thousands of people for slave labor in their concentration camps , the majority of whom were Jewish or Slavic. Both groups were a part of what Germans claimed to be a "vast racially subhuman surplus population" that they " intended to eliminate in time from their new empire ", their term for "racial subhumans" being Untermensch . Thus, one of Adolf Hitler 's ambitions at

10165-452: 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. Nowadays standard QWERTY or the US keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using

10272-522: The widely used eiro , while European Central Bank insisted that the original name euro be used in all languages. New terms are Latvian derivatives, calques 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 or more euphonic loanwords rather than Latvian words. For example, "computer" can be either dators or kompjūters . Both are loanwords;

10379-496: Was chosen as the worst word of 2017. There are three dialects in Latvian: the Livonic dialect, High Latvian and the Central dialect. Latvian dialects and their varieties should not be confused with the Livonian , Curonian , Semigallian and Selonian languages. The Livonic dialect (also called Tamian or tāmnieku ) of Latvian was more affected by the Livonian language substratum than Latvian in other parts of Latvia. It

10486-549: Was first based upon the German orthography , while the alphabet of the Standard Latgalian variety was based on the Polish orthography . At the beginning of the 20th century, it was replaced by a more phonologically consistent orthography. Today, the Latvian standard orthography employs 33 characters: The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet (all except ⟨q, w, x, y⟩ ). It adds

10593-446: Was founded in 681 as an alliance between the ruling Bulgars and the numerous Slavs in the area, and their South Slavic language, the Old Church Slavonic , became the main and official language of the empire in 864 AD. Bulgaria was instrumental in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world. Duchy of Croatia was founded in 7th century and later became Kingdom of Croatia . Principality of Serbia

10700-854: Was founded in 8th, Duchy of Bohemia and Kievan Rus' both in the 9th century. The expansion of the Magyars into the Carpathian Basin and the Germanization of Austria gradually separated the South Slavs from the West and East Slavs . Later Slavic states, which formed in the following centuries included the Second Bulgarian Empire , the Kingdom of Poland , Banate of Bosnia , Duklja and Kingdom of Serbia which later grew into Serbian Empire . Pan-Slavism ,

10807-502: 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. 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 for Russian , Yiddish , Polish , Lithuanian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Estonian and Roma schools. Latvian

10914-530: Was predominantly led by the Russian Empire . As of 1878, there were only three majority Slavic states in the world: the Russian Empire, Principality of Serbia and Principality of Montenegro . Bulgaria was effectively independent but was de jure vassal to the Ottoman Empire until official independence was declared in 1908. The Slavic peoples who were, for the most part, denied a voice in

11021-453: Was published in 1638. The first grammar of the Latvian language is a short “Manual on the Latvian language” ( Latin : Manuductio ad linguam lettonicam ) by Johans Georgs Rehehūzens  [ lv ] , published in 1644 in Riga. Slavic migrations The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages . Slavs are geographically distributed throughout

11128-433: Was reserved mainly for chiefs and their inner circle of warriors. Their language is "barbarous" (that is, not Greek), and the two tribes are alike in appearance, being tall and robust, "while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are all slightly ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts..." Jordanes describes

11235-466: 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, when Czar Alexander III came into power, Russification started. According to the 1897 Imperial Russian Census , there were 505,994 (75.1%) speakers of Latvian in

11342-625: Was to be carried out gradually over 25 to 30 years. After an approximate 30 million Slavs would be killed through starvation and their major cities depopulated, the Germans were supposed to repopulate Eastern Europe. In June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa , Hitler paused the plan to focus on the extermination of the Jews . However, some of the plan was nonetheless implemented. Millions of Slavs were murdered in Eastern Europe; this includes victims of

11449-486: Was to some extent visible as late as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian ) manuscripts which, though based on local Slavic speech of Thessaloniki , could still serve the purpose of the first common Slavic literary language. Standardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian , Bosnian , Bulgarian , Croatian , Czech , Macedonian , Montenegrin , Polish , Russian , Serbian , Slovak , Slovene , and Ukrainian . Russian

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