Pontic Steppe
88-675: The Leninist Young Communist League of Latvia ( Latvian : Latvijas Ļeņina Komunistiskā jaunatnes savienība , LĻKJS ) was the Latvian branch of the Soviet Komsomol that served as the youth wing of the Communist Party of Latvia from 1940 to 1991. The LĻKJS was founded in 1940, during the Soviet occupation of Latvia , as a union of formerly clandestine communist youth organizations that operated in independent Latvia between
176-650: 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
264-520: 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
352-468: A syllable , turned into mixed diphthongs *ir , *il , *im , *in (in rarer cases— *ur , *ul , *um , *un ) in Proto-Baltic. These diphthongs alternated (had an ablaut ) with *er (*ēr) , *el (*ēl) , *em (*ēm) , *en (*ēn) and *ar (*ōr) , *al (*ōl) , *am (*ōm) , *an (*ōn) . One of the unique properties of Baltic languages is the disappearance of the semivowel *i̯ between a consonant and
440-414: A Proto-Baltic stage, which is a view opposed by Miguel Villanueva Svensson and Eugen Hill. Historical linguist Brian D. Joseph argues that in the context of other Indo-European phylogenetic clades, the qualitative evidence for Balto-Slavic is not on par with Indo-Iranian , insofar as Balto-Slavic lacks evidence for shared culture (as is also the case for Italo-Celtic ). Other scholars point out that
528-757: 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 the Ministry of Justice. To counter the influence of English , government organizations (namely the Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Science and
616-486: 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
704-405: 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
792-878: 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
880-517: A common intermediate source, Proto-Balto-Slavic , after the breakup of Proto-Indo-European. Those in opposition continue to be sceptical about the nature of such a relationship and are uncertain whether it is even ascertainable. While Balto-Slavic has been traditionally divided into two main branches, viz. Baltic and Slavic, some linguists like Frederik Kortlandt or Rick Derksen proposed that Proto-Balto-Slavic split into three language groups — East Baltic , West Baltic and Proto-Slavic — without
968-465: A front vowel (e.g. *žemi̯ē > *žemē 'earth'). Another noteworthy trait of Proto-Baltic is the retained intact *m existing before front dental consonants *t , *d , *s (e.g. *šimtan 'hundred', *kimdai 'gloves', *tamsā 'darkness'), which in other Indo-European languages turned into n . However, unlike in Italic or Indo-Iranian languages, in Proto-Baltic *m and *ṃ would become *n at
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#17327871055411056-458: 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
1144-478: 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
1232-603: 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
1320-646: 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 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
1408-461: 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
1496-710: A single *a while the reduced Indo-European vowel schwa primum ( *ə ) also turned into *a as it did in other Indo-European languages of Europe and it ceased to exist in the middle of words. According to the proponents of the Laryngeal theory , the schwa primum appeared by turning laryngeals into vowels, which makes its reconstruction for PIE unnecessary and obsolete. There were four short and five long vowels as well as four short and six long diphthongs as presented below: Vowels *a , *e , *i , *u together with sonorants *r , *l , *m , *n of Proto-Baltic were used to form mixed diphthongs as they are being used in
1584-605: 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 the Uppsala University Library . The first person to translate
1672-782: 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
1760-495: 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 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
1848-594: 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 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
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#17327871055411936-417: Is evinced by roots like *dhers- and *dreǵh- . This semantic group is also noted for having exclusive isoglosses (e.g. PIE: *dreǵh- , *dherbh- , *u̯rengh- , *peḱ- ), though they differ in meaning. Simas Karaliūnas [ lt ] suggested that in the 3rd millennium BC Germanic and Baltic languages shared a common phase of linguistic convergence and that Baltic dialects were initially closer to
2024-461: Is falling down’) and resemblance of comparative degree prefixe -esnis to its corresponding Germanic counterpart (cf. Gothic: -izan ). The linguistic influences of Baltic Finnic languages , which are associated with the eastern Baltic area, can be observed in certain grammatical innovations, such as the merger of some cases with postpositions , thus forming new additional cases (postpositional locatives): inessive *šakāi + en > *šakāi̯en 'in
2112-479: 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
2200-418: Is questionable are presented in Italic : The consonants of Proto-Baltic experienced greater changes than primary vowels when in their primordial condition. PIE aspirated and labialized velar consonants ( *bʰ , *dʰ , *gʰ , *g , *g ʰ , *k ) in Proto-Baltic coincided with plain consonants ( *b , *d , *g , *k ) as they did in some other Indo-European languages. However, at the early stages of development,
2288-418: 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
2376-470: Is still an ongoing debate regarding the boundary of hydronyms in the southwest: Lithuanian linguist Simas Karaliūnas [ lt ] believed that practically all of the basins of Oder and Vystula Rivers belonged to the Baltic hydronym habitat while German linguist Hermann Schall suggested that Baltic hydronyms could be found much further west all the way to Elbe , Saxony and Rügen island. During
2464-488: Is the unattested , reconstructed ancestral proto-language of all Baltic languages . It is not attested in writing, but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method by gathering the collected data on attested Baltic and other Indo-European languages. It represents the common Baltic speech that approximately was spoken between the 3rd millennium BC and ca. 5th century BC , after which it began dividing into West and East Baltic languages. Proto-Baltic
2552-728: 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
2640-540: Is thought to have been a fusional language and is associated with the Corded Ware and Trzciniec cultures. Generally, Proto-Baltic had a SOV word order . Proto-Baltic is said to have possessed certain unique traits, such as turning short Proto-Indo-European vowels *o , *a into *a , retaining and further developing the Proto-Indo-European ablaut , retaining *m before dental consonants ,
2728-484: The 2nd and 1st millennium BC , the Baltic people inhabited larger territories than Germanic and Slavic people did at the time. It is estimated that the Proto-Baltic lands had up to 500,000 people. Inhabitants of the Proto-Baltic area were surrounded by Germanic people in the west, Slavs in the south and Finno-Ugric people in the north and northeast. Russian philologist Vladimir Toporov believes that during 1000–800 BC Proto-Germanic people began expanding into
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2816-629: 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 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
2904-580: 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 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
2992-462: The Livonian language . According to some glottochronological speculations, the East Baltic languages split from West Baltic (or, perhaps, from 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
3080-644: The Teutonic Order in the current Baltic region intensified and later on resulted in the extinction of the Old Prussians in the 18th century. After a long-running debate in the 20th century about the exact nature of the relationship between the Baltic and Slavic branches of the Indo-European family, in the 21st century many historical linguists moved firmly in favour of a shared genealogical history between these two branches, both deriving from
3168-699: 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
3256-589: The phonology and morphology , which is shared by all known Baltic languages, is much more archaic than that of Proto-Slavic, retaining many features attributed to other attested Indo-European languages roughly 3000 years ago. It is also known that some Baltic and Slavic languages have more in common that others: Old Prussian and Latvian share more commonalities with Slavic languages than Lithuanian does. Some similarities between Baltic and Slavic can be found on all levels of linguistic analysis, which led German philologist August Schleicher to believe that there
3344-524: 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 the 13th century after the Livonian Crusade and forced christianization , which formed
3432-574: 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 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
3520-510: 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 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
3608-420: 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 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
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3696-625: The Baltic and Slavic languages. There is some vocabulary (about 60 words) that Baltic and Germanic languages share, excluding loanwords . Common vocabulary mostly includes words relating to work, equipment, agriculture etc., such as Proto-Baltic *darbas , meaning 'work' and Proto-Germanic *derbaz , meaning 'bold, determined, strong' < *derbaną 'to work', Proto-Baltic *derṷā and Proto-Germanic *terwą , meaning 'tar, resin', Proto-Baltic *gāmurii̯as and Proto-Germanic *gōmô , meaning ' palate '. Baltic and Germanic languages also share numeral formation for 11 to 19, both partially possess
3784-698: 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 the World and Nature [ lv ] " ( Augstas gudrības grāmata no pasaules un dabas ; 1774), grammar books and Latvian–German and German–Latvian dictionaries. Until
3872-895: The Germanic dialects than Slavic ones. He noted that although Germanic languages possess more lexical commonalities with Slavic languages, Baltic and Germanic groups share a greater number of grammatical innovations. This is evinced by the possession of *-mo- (e.g. Lithuanian: pirmas , Gothic: fruma , Old English: forma ), second consanguineous component (cf. Lithuanian: vie-nuo- lika , dvy- lika , Gothic: ain- lif , twa- lif , Old High German: ein- lif , zwei- lif ), identical dual number pronouns in first and second person (cf. Lithuanian: vedu , Gothic: wit < *ṷo-dṷō- ‘I lead’; Lithuanian: judu , Gothic: jut < *i̭u-dṷō- ‘I move’), common grammatical constructions to describe natural phenomenons (cf. Lithuanian: sniegas drimba , Latvian: sniegs drēbj , Old Icelandic: drift snaer ‘snow
3960-417: 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
4048-454: 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
4136-472: 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, the state mandates Latvian as the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Form 10–12) for at least 60% of class work (previously,
4224-543: 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 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
4312-509: The Latvians') in contrast to other Indo-European languages that usually apply an agreed modifier expressed by an adjective ( German : die lettische Sprache 'Latvian language') as well as the usage of indirect mood when one is retelling an event without knowing whether it actually happened. In turn, Baltic Finnic languages have many borrowings from the Baltic languages. Baltic languages accelerated diphthongization in these languages,
4400-398: 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,
4488-786: The PIE reconstruction, Proto-Baltic only failed to retain the ablative and allative cases. Neuter gender was only retained by Old Prussian while in Latvian and Lithuanian it ceased to exist. That said, other neuter forms of inflected words such as adjectives , participles , pronouns and numerals remained in Lithuanian. *ā -stem and *ē -stem nouns were feminine, *o -stem nouns basically were masculine and neuter, *s -stem nouns were neuter, *r -stem nouns―masculine and feminine while other noun stems could refer to all three genders. Unlike feminine and masculine nouns, neuter ones always had
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#17327871055414576-462: 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 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
4664-601: 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 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 ,
4752-645: 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
4840-815: The World Wars. Membership of the LĻKJS was predominantly ethnically Latvian , with a substantial Russian minority. In early 1990, delegates at the LĻKJS Congress voted to adopt a new set of organisational statutes independent of the all-Union Komsomol, but not amounting to a full withdrawal. This action was precipitated by the independence of the Estonian and Lithuanian branches of the all-Union Komsomol in 1989 and 1990, respectively. Latvian language Latvian ( endonym : latviešu valoda , pronounced [ˈlatviɛʃu ˈvaluɔda] ), also known as Lettish ,
4928-412: 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,
5016-460: The big city; for the big city' ( ALL ) cf. Lithuanian : didelis miestas , didelio miesto , dideliam miestui ), fortifying suffix -pa / -pä ( Finnish : jopa 'even, as much as', Finnish : vieläpä '(but) also, (but) even', Finnish : jospa 'maybe, if' cf. Lithuanian : bei 'and, as well as', Prussian : bhe 'and') etc. The vowels of Proto-Baltic changed little in comparison to PIE: short vowels *a and *o coincided into
5104-488: The branch', illative *šakān + nā > *šakānā 'into the branch', adessive *šakāi + prei > *šakāip(r)ei '(to be) by the branch' and allative *šakās + prei > *šakāsp(r)ei '(get closer) to the branch'. The impact of the Finnic languages over Baltic languages also explains the widespread use of a non-agreed modifier expressed by the genitive of a noun ( Latvian : latviešu valoda , literally 'language of
5192-474: 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 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
5280-449: 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
5368-465: 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 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
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#17327871055415456-448: 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
5544-434: The differences between plain and aspirated voiced plosives might have been retained. This is because before the plain voiced plosives the vowels were lengthened, which is not the case with the aspirated voiced ones ( Winter's law ). The Proto-Baltic was a satem language , PIE *ḱ turned into *š , PIE *ǵ and PIE *ǵʰ turned into *ž . The sonorants of PIE *ṛ , *ḷ , *ṃ , *ṇ , which were used as vowels and could form
5632-423: 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
5720-805: The disappearance of the semivowel *i̯ between a consonant and a front vowel, neuter *i -stem words had changes *mari̯ī > *marī 'two seas', *aru̯i̯ī > *aru̯ī 'two suitable ones' in dual. *rankā 'hand' < PBS *ránkāˀ < PIE *wrónkeh₂ (> Lith. rankà , Ltv. ròka , Pruss. ranko [written as "rancko"]; cognate with the Lith. verb riñkti ) *žemē 'earth' < PBS *źémē < pre-BS *ǵʰem-m̥ (> Lith. žẽmė , Ltv. zeme , Pruss. zemē [written as "semme"]) *ābō 'apple-tree' < PBS *ā́ˀbōl [apple] < PIE *h₂ébōl (> Lith. obelis , Ltv. ābele , Pruss. wobalne ) *nebas 'cloud' < PBS *néba < PIE *nébʰos (> Old Lith. dẽbesis [f.], Ltv. debess [f.]) Unlike
5808-496: The first syllable, although both syllables had different pitch accents). The noun of Proto-Baltic possessed very archaic traits—the endings were not being shortened and were close to the endings of PIE. It had three grammatical categories: gender (masculine, feminine and neuter), number (singular, dual and plural ) and seven cases: nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , instrumental , locative and vocative with three different dual case forms. In comparison to
5896-432: 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; the native Latvian word for "computer" is skaitļotājs , which is also an official term. However, now dators has been considered an appropriate translation, skaitļotājs
5984-442: The impact of the Baltic languages explains compound forms of the past tense ( Estonian : olen lugenud 'I have read', Estonian : olin lugenud 'I had read' cf. Lithuanian : esu skaitęs , buvau skaitęs ), development of the agreed modifier not found in other Uralic languages ( Estonian : suur linn 'big city' ( NOM ), Estonian : suure linna 'of the big city' ( GEN ), Estonian : suurele linnale 'towards
6072-434: The modern Baltic languages today. It is also well known that there were mixed diphthongs with long vowels at the endings. Long diphthongs can be reconstructed when glottaling (e.g. PIE: *pl̥h₁nós 'full' > Proto-Baltic: *pī́ˀlnas 'full'), compared to PIE, the position of stress in the example is conditioned by Hirt's law . Long mixed diphthongs, which position in the morpheme is hardly determined or their existence
6160-635: The noun, the adjective used to be alternated using a gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), which was then adapted to the corresponding gender of the noun. Adjectives had three degrees : positive (no suffix: masculine *labas , neuter *laban , feminine *labā 'good'), comparative (suffix *-es- : masculine *labesis , neuter *labesi , feminine *labesē 'better') and superlative (suffix *-im- : masculine *labimas , neuter *labiman , feminine *labimā 'the best'). They had singular, dual and plural numbers as they were applied to adjectives for combining them with nouns. The vocative case usually concurred with
6248-686: 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
6336-510: 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, 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 ,
6424-706: 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 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
6512-432: The productivity of the word stem ē and free accentuation with two pitch accents . Also, the proto-language is thought to have had its own set of diminutive suffixes, identical endings for verb tenses and moods , past tense by applying thematic vowels *-ā- and *-ē- , as well as its own lexicon , including onomastic elements. Baltic hydronyms cover a vast area of 860,000 km from Vystula River in
6600-480: 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
6688-492: The same form for the nominative, accusative, and vocative cases. This form distinguished neuter nouns from masculine and feminine ones belonging to the same stem. Masculine and feminine nouns of the same stem had identical endings, and the grammatical gender was indicated by gender-changing words (pronouns, adjectives, participles, etc.) used with nouns: *labas anglis 'a good coal' (masculine), *labā au̯is 'a good sheep' (feminine), *laba(n) mari 'a good sea' (neuter). Because of
6776-812: The same formation of verbs in past tense ( ablaut ), absence of the aorist . According to German linguist Wolfgang P. Schmid [ de ] , at first Proto-Baltic was a centum language along with Proto-Germanic, but it eventually became satem later on. Some scholars believe that Baltic and Germanic contacts are older than those with Slavic languages while others claim the opposite. According to Lithuanian linguist Saulius Ambrazas [ lt ] , Germanic people borrowed certain suffixes from their Baltic neighbours, such as *-ing- , *-isko- , *-ō-men- (e.g. Old High German : arming 'poor person', Old Icelandic : bernska 'childhood', Gothic : aldōmin ( DAT ) 'senility'). Both Baltic and Germanic emotional verbs possess similar semantic development, which
6864-664: The stem), 3) a system with the baritone, mobile and oxytonic accentuations. There were two pitch accents , an acute (´) and a circumflex (˜), which were pronounced with pure and mixed diphthongs and long vowels . Pitch accents could be pronounced both in the stems and in the endings. The acute pitch had a rising intonation, while the circumflex pitch had a falling intonation. Some scientists ( Zigmas Zinkevičius , Vytautas Kardelis [ lt ] , Vytautas Rinkevičius (1981) [ lt ] etc.) believe that pitch accents were pronounced both in stressed and unstressed syllables, for example *'rãnkā́ 'hand' (stress placed on
6952-424: The two language groups were indeed a unity after the division of Indo-European, but also suggested that after the two had divided into separate entities (Baltic and Slavic), they had posterior contact. Russian linguists Vladimir Toporov and Vyacheslav Ivanov believed that Proto-Slavic language formed from the peripheral-type Baltic dialects. Thus, there are at least six points of view on the relationships between
7040-477: 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.,
7128-435: The very end of a word. In the Proto-Baltic language, the stress could be placed on any syllable , the stress was free, unfixed. According to the movement of stress, three possible variants of accent system are reconstructed: 1) a system with baritone accentuation (stress on the stem) and oxytonic accentuation (stress on the endings), 2) a system with baritone accentuation and mobile accentuation (stress moves from endings to
7216-452: 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
7304-480: The west to Moscow in the east and from the Baltic Sea in the north all the way to Kyiv in the south. The current Lithuanian and Latvian lands combined constitute approximately one-sixth of the former Baltic territory. Some researchers suggest that in the past Baltic lands from Vystula to Daugava were inhabited by Baltic Finnic tribes but they were assimilated by the Baltic newcomers later on. There
7392-566: The western Baltic territory starting from the Pasłęka River. Later on, the Baltic area began shrinking even more due to the migration of the Goths . During the migration period Slavic people began expanding into the northern and eastern territories of the Balts. From 11th to 12th century, Russian scriptures mention ongoing battles near Moscow with Eastern Galindians . Since 1225, the conquests of
7480-429: 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 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
7568-497: 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
7656-439: Was indeed a common point of development. French linguist Antoine Meillet , however, rejected this idea and claimed that similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages were a result of close contact. Meanwhile, Latvian linguist Jānis Endzelīns suggested that following the split of PIE, Baltic and Slavic languages evolved independently, but later experienced a common period of greater contact. Jan Michał Rozwadowski proposed that
7744-758: 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. Proto-Baltic language Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Baltic ( PB , PBl , Common Baltic )
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