Latvian: What is it?



Latvian.... What is that? Who speaks that? Ohh that's what they speak in Libya right? These are all real questions I have been asked when talking about the Latvian language. For this Language journal entry please allow me to talk about my favorite language in the world! Latvian (Latviešu valoda in Latvian) is an Indo-European language (Balto-Slavic, Baltic, Eastern-Baltic to be more specific) with a population of about 2 million native speakers. Latviešu valoda is written in the Latvian alphabet and is the official language of The Latvian Republic, and the European Union. Latvian in one of the two last living Baltic languages with Lithuanian (Lietuvių kalba). 
            Linguistically, Latvian is broken up into three main dialects: the Livonian dialect, High Latvian and the Middle dialect. In addition to these Latvian dialects there are also four “ethnic” languages spoken by various ethnic groups of people in Latvia on a smaller scale: Livonian, Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian. Latvian is spoken in every part of Latvia however, there is an extremely unfortunate (yet interesting) issue of linguistic oppression in southern Latvia. In fact, in Daugavpīls, Latvia (the second largest and most populated city in Latvia) one can go weeks without speaking Latvian to another person. 
          In fact, due to historic soviet forced linguistic oppression, many people in southern Latvia speak little to no Latvian. Unfortunately, due to the rise in nationalism has led to the creation and enforcement of laws like “The Latvian Official Language Law” wherein government officials cannot speak any language other than Latvian when addressing the people. This has made it hard for some people to keep up with their own government. Additionally, to get jobs and even gain citizenship after the collapse of the Soviet Union you need to place a specific level of a national language exam and thus some people who have lived in Latvia their entire lives cannot become citizens because of a skill that was valued and forced during the soviet rule.


What Does Latvian Look/Sound Like?
·      Sveiki – Sveiki - Hello
·      Kā tev klājās – Ka teyo klayas – How are you
·      Man iet labi – Maan iet labi – I am well
·     Es runāju latviski- Es roonayu latviski – I speak Latvian
·      Atpakaļskata spogulis – Atpakallskata spogulis - Rearview mirror
·      *Slapjedraņķis - Slapyedrañkkis – Sludge
*My favorite word* 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Code-switching in Latvia

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing 101 16.2.19             By definition, code switching is “[The] process of shifting from one linguistic code (a  language  or  dialect ) to another, depending on the social  context  or conversational setting.” [1] So, why would I write a language log about it? Well, code switching is a really interesting and controversial topic. Some people believe that code switching is the reason why people speak an “impure” form of a given language. In order to illustrate this opinion, I will share a personal anecdote that I think will really help illustrate why some people have this opinion or least in the Latvian-Russian relation.              Living in Southern Latvia, I had made friends with many Latvian nationals whose first language was Russian. This is a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While speaking Russian and only Russian is extremely normal in southern Latvia this is an issue that many people in northern Latvia fear is
Read more

Music and Language

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak 10.4.19 Music and Language For my final language log I want to talk about how music has affected my language learning process. For my whole life, music and language have been important to the development of who I am asa person today but almost exclusively separate. It wasn’t until 6th  grade when I decided to dedicate my summer to perfecting my knowledge of the Spanish language that I mixed the two. At the end of my 6th grade school year, I asked Señora Perez for her advice. “How can I accelerate the language learning process and become fluent this summer.” Looking back now I can laugh and can understand why sra. Perez was so taken aback. She had told me that in order to get better at Spanish over the summer I could do a couple of things: watch tv in Spanish, read an article everyday in Spanish and finally, listen to spanish music. While I did all of the things she recommended, I focused on listening to Spanish music. To me, this was th
Read more