Latvian - interesting facts
The Latvian language, known as Latviešu valoda in its native form, is spoken by approximately 1.5 million people, accounting for about 0.02% of the global population. It falls outside the top hundred languages worldwide regarding the number of native speakers.
Latvian is the official language of Latvia, with over 80% of its population using it as their primary mode of communication. Interestingly, Latvia is also home to a significant Russian-speaking minority.
Belonging to the eastern Baltic language group, Latvian emerged as a separate language around the 6th and 7th centuries AD. By the 9th century, significant differences began appearing between Latvian and Lithuanian, initially regarded as dialectical variances. However, the disparities between the two languages are now so considerable that Latvians and Lithuanians cannot freely understand each other. The earliest known piece of Latvian literature is a prayer text from 1544, published in Cosmographia. The Latvian alphabet, which evolved based on German language orthography, underwent numerous changes and was finally standardized in the 20th century. Today, the Latvian State Language Centre, headquartered in Riga, regulates the norms of the Latvian language.
Compared to Lithuanian, Latvian retains fewer features characteristic of the Proto-Indo-European language, largely due to the strong influence of other languages, primarily Germanic but Slavic and Finno-Ugric. This external impact resulted in substantial grammatical and lexical modifications. Contemporary Latvian comprises three main dialects: Livonian, Central (the basis of the standard variety), and Latgalian.
Latvian is a highly inflectional language, with nouns and adjectives inflected for cases (seven, like Polish), numbers, and gender (masculine and feminine, as there is no neuter gender). Interestingly, Latvian adjectives have both long and short forms.
Latvian features long and short vowels, which sometimes differentiate the meanings of words. In writing, long vowels are marked with a macron (a line over the vowel), such as ā, ē, ī, ū.
The longest word in the Latvian language is the 27-letter "pretpulksteņrādītājvirziens," which translates to "in a direction against the clock." Among the most challenging words to pronounce is the adjective "trīsšķautņains" (triangular). Another fascinating term is "ieeja" (entrance), composed almost entirely of vowels.
Latvian is one of the official languages of the European Union.
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