Latvian language

or Lettish language

East Baltic language spoken by some two million people in the Republic of Latvia and in diaspora communities, including about 85,000 speakers in North America.

Like Lithuanian, it is sparsely attested until the first printed books in Latvian appear in 1585–86. The essentials of the present orthography, which employs the Latin alphabet with a number of diacritics, were adopted in 1908. Literary Latvian is based on the dialect spoken in Riga, Latvia's capital, though in recent years there has been a resurgence of literature in High Latvian (Latgalian), the dialect of eastern Latvia. Relative to Lithuanian, Latvian has undergone a number of striking sound changes, though the grammatical structures of the two languages are similar.

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also called  Lettish , Latvian  Latviesu Valoda 

      East Baltic language spoken primarily in Latvia, where it has been the official language since 1918. It belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. (See Baltic languages.) In the late 20th century Latvian was spoken by about 1.5 million people.

      The earliest texts in Latvian, a Roman Catholic catechism and a Lutheran catechism, both written in Gothic script, date from the 16th century. The first grammar of the language appeared in the 18th century, and by the end of the 19th century the literary language was well developed. A modified Latin alphabet was adopted in 1922.

      Latvian has three dialect groups: East, or High, Latvian; West Latvian; and Central Latvian. The last is more conservative and was the basis for the modern literary language.

      Although closely related to Lithuanian (Lithuanian language), Latvian is more innovating than Lithuanian in many respects; for example, the reduction of vowels in final syllables has progressed much further in Latvian. Furthermore, because of the influence of Finnish, word accent has been fixed on the first syllable.

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