| About the latvian language |
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Stran 1 od 3 Introduction Andragoški zavod Maribor - Ljudska univerza is the author and the coordinator of the Language Festival project. Together with the partners from the Netherlands, Germany, Check Republic, Slovakia and Hungary we applied for financing with EU programme Socrates - Lingua 1. The project received positive feedback and was accepted by European Commission to be implemented between October 2003 and October 2005. In the project we prepared and organised the Language Festival in Maribor from 29th September to 2nd October 2004, held book exhibition of minor European languages, produced a web site and books on chosen languages. The Festival hosted many experts who introduced 24 European languages to general public in 4 days not only at AZM-LU but also at many schools and other institutions. In April 2005 we held book exhibition where we presented books and other materials on 17 minor European languages at Maribor Faculty of Education. We finalised the activities by producing the web site you're using at the moments. Here you can find some information regarding language connected culture, basic characteristics of relevant languages and language survival kits. Website language is Slovenian. Also German and English versions are available. In time we hope to achieve English, German and Esperanto descriptions for all languages. This website is still very much alive and constantly expanding. We plan to add new languages as well. Promotionally the project enjoyed great success. In cooperation with Mediamix we created an innovative way of attracting the public and received many awards at advertising festivals. Socrates Lingua declared the Language Festival project one of 50 best examples of promoting languages. Info regarding promotion of the Festival is available on: http://www.mediamix.si/slo/News/2005junij02.html Melita Cimerman and Zlatko Tišljar. Author: Jana Tesarova Latvian is used by: one million four hundred thousand (1 400 000), native speakers in Latvia, two hundred thousand (200 000) abroad Local dialects: Tamian dialect (lTbiskais dialects), Central dialect (vidus dialekts), High Latvian dialect (augszemnieku dialekts) Minority ethnic groups and languages: Russian, Belarussian, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, Estonian and Romany Education: primary, secondary, professional, university, postgradual General Introduction Latvian language is a State language in Latvia; it is a native language for one million four hundred thousand (1 400 000) people in Latvia and two hundred thousand (200 000) people abroad. According to native speakers' number, Latvian language occupied the 105. place in world. Latvian is one of 250 major languages in world (spoken by more than a million people). The Latvian language is also one of the oldest. It was established as a State language in order to preserve this unique cultural heritage. Language Group Latvian language belongs to Baltic branch of the Indo-European language group. There were three (3) Baltic languages; surviving are Latvian and Lithuanian. The third Baltic language ~ Old Prussian language — died out in the 17th century. There are many similar words in Baltic languages. For example, the words for God, mother and eye are:
As I have already mentioned, Latvian language is one of the oldest, and it has some similarities with Sanskrit. For example, the words for God and day are:
In comparison with Lithuanian, Latvian language is not so closely related to Sanskrit as Lithuanian which has kept its sounds system and many archaic forms and sentence structures. In other words, Lithuanian is more archaic than Latvian language. A Latvian and a Lithuanian can roughly understand what each other is trying to say but cannot hold a deep conversation. Local Dialects There are three dialects in the spoken Latvian language:
The Central dialect has become the basis for the Latvian literary language. Thanks to its geographic situation in the middle of the area inhabited by the Latvians, it has been less influenced by the neighbouring foreign languages (Finno-Ugric and Slavic) than the Tamian and High Latvian dialects, and therefore is desirable as more genuinely pure Latvian. There were also other favourable factors for the Central dialect to become the basis for the Latvian literary language, namely: in the central regions of Latvia where the Central dialect was spoken, there were already several important economic, commercial and cultural centers as Riga, Liepāja, Jelgava, Valmiera and others. Orthography Modern Standard Latvian uses Latin alphabet employing 33 letters and their combinations. Vowels have the same sound values as in English, with several additions: a) There are short vowels in Latvian: a, e, i, o, u. b) There are long vowels in Latvian: ā, ē, ī, ū. Vowel length is marked by a diacritical sign over the letter ~ by a macron.
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