Latvian language
Latvian | |
---|---|
Lettish[1] | |
latviešu valoda | |
Pronunciation | [ˈlatviɛʃu ˈvaluɔda] |
Native to | Latvia |
Region | Baltic |
Ethnicity | Latvians |
Native speakers | 1.5 million[2] (2023) |
Early forms | |
Dialects |
|
Glottolog | latv1249 |
Linguasphere | 54-AAB-a |
Use of Latvian as the primary language at home in 2011 by municipalities of Latvia | |
Latvian (
As a
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.
Classification
Latvian belongs to the
History
Origins
According to some
Latvian as a distinct language emerged over several centuries from the language spoken by the ancient
16th–18th century
The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a hymn made by
The first person to
19th century
Until the 19th century, the Latvian written language was influenced by
According to the
20th century
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 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, a place such as Lecropt (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village of Tillicoultry becomes Tilikutrija.
After the
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.[24]
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
The Official Language Law was adopted on 9 December 1999.[26] 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.
21st century
To counter the influence of Russian and 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 the widely used eiro, while European Central Bank insisted that the original name euro be used in all languages.[27] 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; 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
Dialects
There are three dialects in Latvian: the Livonian dialect, High Latvian and the Middle dialect. Latvian dialects and their varieties should not be confused with the Livonian, Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian languages.
Livonian dialect
The Livonian dialect of Latvian was more affected by the
Middle dialect
The Middle dialect spoken in central and Southwestern Latvia is the basis of standard Latvian. The dialect is divided into the Vidzeme variety, the Curonian variety and the Semigallian variety. The Vidzeme variety and the Semigallian variety are closer to each other than to the Curonian variety, which is more archaic than the other two. There are three syllable intonations in some parts of Vidzeme variety of the Middle dialect, extended, broken and falling. The Curonian and Semigallian varieties have two syllable intonations, extended and broken, but some parts of the Vidzeme variety has extended and falling intonations. In the Curonian variety, ŗ is still used. The Kursenieki language, which used to be spoken along Curonian Spit, is closely related to the varieties of the Middle dialect spoken in Courland.
Upper Latvian dialect
Upper Latvian dialect is spoken in Eastern Latvia. It is set apart from the rest of the Latvian by a number of phonetic differences. The dialect has two main varieties – Selonian (two syllable intonations, falling and rising) and Non-Selonian (falling and broken syllable intonations). There is a standard language, the Latgalian language, which is based on deep non-Selonian varieties spoken in the south of Latgale. The term "Latgalian" is sometimes also applied to all non-Selonian 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 Latgalian, for example, speakers of deep Non-Selonian varieties in Vidzeme explicitly deny speaking Latgalian.[34] It 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.[9] The Latvian Government since 1990 has also taken measures to protect the dialect from extinction.[9]
Non-native speakers
The history of the Latvian language (see below) has placed it in a peculiar position for 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:
The increased adoption of Latvian by minorities was brought about by its status as the country's only official language and other changes in the society after the
Grammar
Latvian grammar represents a classic Indo-European (Baltic) system with well developed inflection and derivation. Primary word stress, with some exceptions in derivation and inflection, is on the first
Nouns
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.
Verbs
There are three conjugation classes in Latvian. Verbs are conjugated for person, tense, mood and voice.
Orthography
Latvian in Latin script was first based upon the German orthography, while the alphabet of the Latgalian dialect was based on the Polish orthography. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was replaced by a more phonologically consistent orthography.
Standard orthography
Today, the Latvian standard orthography employs 33 characters:
Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A | Ā | B | C | Č | D | E | Ē | F | G | Ģ | H | I | Ī | J | K | Ķ | L | Ļ | M | N | Ņ | O | P | R | S | Š | T | U | Ū | V | Z | Ž |
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
a | ā | b | c | č | d | e | ē | f | g | ģ | h | i | ī | j | k | ķ | l | ļ | m | n | ņ | o | p | r | s | š | t | u | ū | v | z | ž |
The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet (all except ⟨q, w, x, y⟩). It adds 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 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 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 Latgalian, and some Latvians campaign for 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, 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 Latgalian, where it represents /ɨ/, a sound not present in other dialects.
Old orthography
The old orthography was based on German and did not represent 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 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.
Latvian on computers
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 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.[36]
Nowadays standard QWERTY or the US keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using a dead key (usually ', occasionally ~).[36] 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
Comparative orthography
For example, the Lord's Prayer in Latvian written in different styles:
First orthography (Cosmographia Universalis, 1544) |
Old orthography, 1739[38] | Modern orthography | Internet-style |
---|---|---|---|
Muuſze Thews exkan tho Debbes | Muhſu Tehvs debbeſîs | Mūsu tēvs debesīs | Muusu teevs debesiis |
Sweetyttz thope totws waerdtcz | Swehtits lai top taws wahrds | Svētīts lai top tavs vārds | Sveetiits lai top tavs vaards |
Enaka mums touwe walſtibe | Lai nahk tawa walſtiba | Lai nāk tava valstība | Lai naak tava valstiiba |
Tows praetcz noteſe | Taws prahts lai noteek | Tavs prāts lai notiek | Tavs praats lai notiek |
ka exkan Debbes tha arridtczan wuerſſon ſemmes | kà debbeſîs tà arirdſan zemes wirsû | Kā debesīs, tā arī virs zemes | Kaa debesiis taa arii virs zemes |
Muſze beniſke mayſe bobe mums ſdjoben | Muhsu deeniſchtu maizi dod mums ſchodeen | Mūsu dienišķo maizi dod mums šodien | Muusu dienishkjo maizi dod mums shodien |
Vnbe pammet mums muſſe parrabe | Un pametti mums muhſu parradus [later parahdus] | Un piedod mums mūsu parādus | Un piedod mums muusu paraadus |
ka mehs pammettam muſſims parabenekims | kà arri mehs pamettam ſaweem parrahdneekeem | Kā arī mēs piedodam saviem parādniekiem | Kaa arii mees piedodam saviem paraadniekiem |
Vnbe nhe wedde mums exkan kaerbenaſchenne | Un ne eeweddi muhs eekſch kahrdinaſchanas | Un neieved mūs kārdināšanā | Un neieved muus kaardinaashanaa |
Seth atpeſthmums no to loune | bet atpeſti muhs no ta launa [later łauna] | Bet atpestī mūs no ļauna | Bet atpestii muus no ljauna |
Aefto thouwa gir ta walſtibe | Jo tew peederr ta walſtiba | Jo tev pieder valstība | Jo tev pieder valstiiba |
Vnbe tas ſpeez vnb tas Goobtcz tur muſſige. | Un tas ſpehks un tas gods muhſchigi [later muhzigi]. | Spēks un gods mūžīgi. | Speeks un gods muuzhiigi. |
Amen. | Amen. | Āmen. | Aamen. |
Phonology
Consonants
Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Post-alveolar/Palatal | Velar | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal
|
m | n | ɲ | [ŋ] |
Stop
|
p b | t d | c ɟ | k ɡ |
Affricate
|
t͡s d͡z | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | ||
Fricative
|
(f) v | s z | ʃ ʒ | (x) |
Central approximant/Trill
|
r | j | ||
Lateral approximant
|
l | ʎ |
Consonants in consonant sequences assimilate to the voicing of the subsequent consonant, e.g. apgabals [ˈabɡabals] or labs [ˈlaps]. 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 is pronounced as /sː/, šs and žs as /ʃː/.
Vowels
Latvian has six vowels, with length as distinctive feature:
Front | Central | Back | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
short | long | short | long | short | long | |
Close | i | iː | u | uː | ||
Mid | e | eː | (ɔ) | (ɔː) | ||
Open | æ | æː | a | aː |
/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.
Syllable accent
Standard Latvian and, with some exceptions in derivation and inflection, all of 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.
Loanwords
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 the period of Swedish Livonia brought loanwords like skurstenis (chimney) from Swedish.[39] It also has loanwords from the Finnic languages, mainly from Livonian and Estonian.[40] There are about 500-600 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).[15]
Loanwords from other Baltic language include ķermenis (body) from Old Prussian, as well as veikals (store) and paģiras (hangover) from Lithuanian.[39]
History of the study
The first Latvian dictionary Lettus compiled by Georg Mancelius was published in 1638.[41]
The first grammar of the Latvian language is a short “Manual on the Latvian language” (
Bibliography
- Bielenstein, Die lettische Sprache (Berlin, 1863–64)
- Bielenstein, Lettische Grammatik (Mitau, 1863)
- Bielenstein, Die Elemente der lettischen Sprache (Mitau, 1866), popular in treatment
- Ulmann and Brasche, Lettisches Wörterbuch (Riga, 1872–80)
- Bielenstein, Tausend lettische Räthsel, übersetzt und erklärt (Mitau, 1881)
- Bezzenberger, Lettische Dialekt-Studien (Göttingen, 1885)
- Bezzenberger, Ueber die Sprach der preussischen Letten;; (Göttingen, 1888)
- Thomsen, Beröringer melem de Finske og de Baltiske Sprog (Copenhagen, 1890)
- Bielenstein, Grenzen des lettischen Volksstammes und der lettischen Sprache (St. Petersburg, 1892)
- Baron and Wissendorff, Latwju dainas (Latvian Folksongs, Mitau, 1894)
- Andreianov, Lettische Volkslieder und Mythen (Halle, 1896 )
- Bielenstein, Ein glückliches Leben (Riga, 1904)
- Brentano, Lehrbuch der lettischen Sprache (Vienna, c. 1907)
- Holst, Lettische Grammatik (Hamburg, 2001)
- Wolter, "Die lettische Literatur," in Die ost-europäische Literaturen (Berlin, 1908)
- Kalning, Kurzer Lettischer Sprachführer (Riga, 1910)
Literary histories in Latvian
- Klaushush, Latweeschu rakstneezibas wehsture (Riga, 1907)
- Pludons, Latwiju literaturas vēsture (Jelgava, 1908–09)
- Lehgolnis, Latweeschu literaturas wehsture (Riga, 1908)
- Prande, Latviešu Rakstniecība Portrejās (Rīga, 1923)
See also
References
- TheFreeDictionary.com. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
- ^ Valsts valoda
- ^ Prauliņš (2012), p. 1
- ^ Prauliņš (2012), p. 1
- ^ "EU official languages". European-union.europa.eu. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
- ^ "Dažādu tautu valodu prasme". vvk.lv (in Latvian).
- ^ a b "At Home Latvian Is Spoken by 62% of Latvian Population; the Majority – in Vidzeme and Lubāna County". Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia. 26 September 2013. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
- ^ a b "Latvian Language Is Spoken by 62% of the Population". Baltic News Network. 26 September 2013. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d Žemaitis, Augustinas. "Languages". OnLatvia.com. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
- ^ OCLC 872451315.
- ^ "How Latgale chose to join Latvia". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. 2 May 2017. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
The Latgalian language falls within the High Latvian dialect and is of course mutually intelligible with the other dialects.
- ^ "Latgalian Language in Latvia: Between Politics, Linguistics and Law". International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity. 30 March 2018. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
- ^ For example the Latvian debitive verb form (man ir jāmācās “I must study” or “it is necessary for me to study”) and the Lithuanian frequentative past (jie eidavo “they used to go”).Baltic languages - Comparison of Lithuanian and Latvian Archived 2021-10-25 at the Wayback Machine, Encyclopedia Britannica
- ^ "Livones.net - Mutual influence between Livonian and Latvian".
- ^ a b Stafecka, Anna (2014). "Baltic and Finnic linguistic relations reflected in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages".
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - )
- OCLC 908192063.
- ^ "Livonia. 13th-16th Century". Archived from the original on 2017-10-27. Retrieved 2017-10-27.
- ^ Vīksniņš, Nicholas (1973). "The Early History of Latvian Books". Lituanus. 19 (3). Archived from the original on 24 April 2012. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
- ^ "National treasure: The oldest Latvian-language book in Rīga". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. 25 August 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ^ Rozenberga, Māra; Sprēde, Antra (24 August 2016). "National treasure: The first Bible in Latvian". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ^ "The First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897 – Courland governorate". Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
- ^ "The First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897 – Governorate of Livonia". Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
- ^ Minority Protection in Latvia (PDF). Open Society Institute. 2001. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
- ^ Latvian Centre for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies (2004). Analytical Report PHARE RAXEN_CC - Minority Education (PDF). Vienna: Minority Education in Latvia. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-10. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
- likumi.lv. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
- ^ "No 'eira' - but 'eiro' will do". The Baltic Times. 6 October 2004. Retrieved 28 July 2007.
- ^ "'Glābējsilīte' is word of the year". Latvians Online. 18 January 2010. Retrieved 14 February 2010.
- ^ "Best and worst words of 2018 underlined". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. 28 January 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
- ^ "Best and worst words of 2017 underlined". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. 31 January 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
- ^ "Obituary: Last Native Speaker of the Livonian Language Died Age 103". GeoCurrents. Archived from the original on October 26, 2013. Retrieved 2013-12-01.
- Lsm.lv(in Latvian). 2022-10-18. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
- ^ Charter, David. "Death of a language: last ever speaker of Livonian passes away aged 103". The Times. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
- .
- ISBN 978-9984-815-81-7. Archived(PDF) from the original on 2022-10-10.
- ^ a b Gross, Arnis (July 4, 2015). "The Next Challenge for the Latvian Language". Latvians Online. Retrieved October 27, 2017.
- ^ Veinberga, Linda (2001). "Latviešu valodas izmaiņas un funkcijas interneta vidē". politika.lv (in Latvian). Archived from the original on 2012-05-24. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ BIBLIA, published Riga, 1848 (reprint), original edition 1739; "modern" old orthographies published into the 20th century do not double consonants
- ^ a b Veips, Lauris (13 May 2017). "From the Language of Serfs to Official EU Communication – the Journey of Latvian". LSM.lv. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ^ "Baltic languages – Loanwords in Baltic". britannica.com.
- ISBN 3-374-01997-8.
- ^ Kabelka, J. (1982). Baltų filologijos įvadas: Vadovėlis respublikos aukštųjų mokyklų filologijos specialybės studentams [Introduction to Baltic Philology: A Textbook for Philology Students of Higher Education in the Republic] (in Latvian). Vilnius: Mokslas. p. 101.
Further reading
- Derksen, Rick (1996). Metatony in Baltic. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
- Kalnača, Andra; Lokmane, Ilze (2021). Latvian Grammar. Rīga: University of Latvia Press. ISBN 978-9934-18-635-6.
- Prauliņš, Dace (2012). Latvian: An Essential Grammar. London: Routeledge. ISBN 9780415576925.
External links
- Live Latvian-language radio streams online
- Official Language Law in English
- Overview of the Latvian Language (en)
- State (Official) Language Commission (linguistic articles, applicable laws, etc.)
- English–Latvian / Latvian–English dictionary
- English-Latvian and Latvian–English online translation
- Latvian–English Dictionary from Webster's Online Dictionary – The Rosetta Edition
- National Agency for Latvian Language Training
- Examples of Latvian words and phrases (with sound)
- Languages of the World:Latvian
- Latvian bilingual dictionaries
- Latvian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)