The Latvian language is spoken by about 2 million people, mostly in the territory of Latvia. The Latvian languagebelongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family; and the only other representative of the living languages of this branch is Lithuanian.
In general, Latvian is less archaic than the Lithuanian language, and some Latvian sounds and forms have remained in the Lithuanian language until now.
The contemporary phonetic system of the Latvian language formed until about 1200.
When the Livonian Brothers of the Sword conquered the territory of Latvia in 1290, the close relation among all eastern Baltic tribes (as well as Latvians and Lithuanians) was rather weak.
There exist three Latvian dialects: the Livonian, Middle and High Latvian (or Latgalian) dialect. The literary language is based on the Middle dialect; the Latin alphabet with diacritic signs is used for the written language; and the Gothic script was used earlier.
The first written monument is Catechism (Catechismus Catholicorum, 1585).
The first Latvian-German dictionary was published by Georgius Mancelius in 1638;
The first Grammar of the Latvian language was published by Johann Georg Rehehausen in 1644;
The Bible was translated into Latvian in 1685. Similarly to the Lithuanian language, Latvian publications of the 16th-18th century were translations of religious works.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the works of the Latvian linguists Juris Alunāns (1832–1864) and Atis Kronvalds (1837–1875) made a big impact on the standard Latvian language based on the Middle dialect.
The Latvian literary language formed at the end of the 19th century – beginning of the 20th century, this is the time when the Latvian dialects were aligned with the Latvian literary language.
The official language of Latvia is the Latvian literary language.
The Latvian alphabet consists of 33 letters, of which 11 are with diacritic signs.
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