LATVIA
Language
Language
Cities in LATVIA
| Riga |
Language
The Latvian language, like Lithuanian, belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. Latvian is written in Latin letters and is strongly influenced by the German language. The oldest examples of Latvian are found in catechisms published in 1585. Due to the many ethnic groups (especially Russians), only about half of all Latvians speak the Latvian language. On the other hand, most ethnic Latvians speak Russian and often German in addition to Latvian.
The fact that Latvian belongs to the same language family as Lithuanian and that it differs significantly from Estonian, which belongs to another language family, is demonstrated by the following list of numerical words:
| Est | Latvian | Lithuanian | |
| 1 | üks | viens | vienas |
| 2 | kaks | divi | du |
| 3 | kolm | tris | trys |
| 4 | neli | cetri | keturi |
| 5 | viis | pieci | penki |
| 6 | kuus | seši | šeši |
| 7 | seitse | septini | septyni |
| 8 | kaheksa | astoni | astuoni |
| 9 | üheksa | devini | devyni |
| 10 | kümme | desmit | dešimt |
Sources
Baister, S. / Latvia
Bradt Publications
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania : country studies
Federal Research Division, Library of Congress,
Williams, N. / Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania
Lonely Planet
CIA - World Factbook
BBC - Country Profiles
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