A small national language and its multilingual challenges : the case of Latvian

The Baltic language of Latvian is spoken as a first language by just over one million speakers, largely in Latvia but with a scattering of speakers around the world, principally in Europe, North America and Australia. Almost 500,000 people speak it as a second language, with varying degrees of proficiency. With this number of speakers, Latvian is roughly the 250th largest language in the world (Latvia State Language Agency, 2005:21). As one of the official languages of the EU, a highly developed literary language, and a language with official status in its nation, the future of Latvian" like neighbouring Estonian and Lithuanian" would appear to be secure. Particularly interesting is the fact that Latvian has not only gained (or more precisely regained) official status for itself through the law, but has also succeeded in increasing the number of people who speak it as a second language, an unusual example of a small language spreading as a lingua franca among speakers of much larger languages. At the same time, the past, and particularly the recent Soviet past, places constraints upon the spread of Latvian throughout its territory and in all linguistic domains. During the Soviet period hundreds of thousands of Soviet settlers were brought to Latvia, as in the case of Estonia, but were taught nothing about Latvia, its history or culture, and were never encouraged to learn the local language (Agarin, 2010). While, as we shall see, many have now accepted Latvian and are in many cases proficient in the language, there are significant exceptions, and language attitudes from the Soviet period continue to be held. Moreover, these constraints are not only a relic of the Soviet past but are actively exploited by Russia in seeking to exercise its influence over former Soviet citizens living in what it sees as its 'near abroad'. As a consequence, European organizations have also been drawn into appraisals of Baltic language and citizenship policies. In the midst of these political pressures, Latvian also needs to be developed as a language, in particular to cope with technological change and European administrative and cultural developments, while also paying attention to its own diversity in terms of regional and dialectical variations. The emphasis on the conflicts between Latvian and Russian has tended to overshadow these other linguistic considerations, and while this chapter pays particular attention to this central issue, it also looks more broadly at other challenges facing the Latvian language today.