Latvian Through the Ages
During the period when Latvia was associated with the USSR, Latvian, just as the Estonian, was suppressed in a targeted way. In consequence of this policy, Latvian speakers made up just 51% of the population of Latvia in 1990. With Latvia's detachment from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its admission to the European Union in the year 2004, this trend was stopped. In the year 2006, 70% of Latvia's inhabitants once again spoke Latvian as their native language, in total approx. 2.2 million people.
Latvian is attached to the group of Indo-Germanic languages in a very primal form which exhibits some similarities to the ancient languages of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. In addition, the vocabulary includes many loan words from the German, Swedish, Russian and lately also from the English.
Culturally speaking, Latvian has been subject to Scandinavian influences most of all. Contemporary Latvian culture has diverse links to the Northern German cultural environment.
In contrast to the Latvians, of whom about 80% are bilingual, i.e. they comprehend, speak and write both their native language and Russian, about half of the Russian minority in Latvia (35 percent of the population) is monolingual according to official statistics, which means that they neither speak nor read Latvian.
