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Comment by ommunist | Hacker News Reader

This is bullshit. I spoke about it with Edgar Leitan, who is native Latvian speaker, born in Rezekne, and is Professor of linguistics specializing in oriental languages, in Vienna University. Ask him yourself. http://edgar-leitan.livejournal.com

Latvian as a language never lived better under the USSR, because Russian revolution performance was much ensured by Latvian soldiers hired by Lenin, and that was never forgotten. Among the highest Soviet officials there always been Latvians. Boris Pugo being the last.

Learn your own history from professionals, not from tabloids full of hate speech.

UPD: By the way, its Latgalian that is PTE. Latvian is simplified Latgalian. It may look as a bit of exagerration, but truth is worth discovery.

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(Disclaimer: I'm not Latvian. I just happen to speak the language rather well, run a small business in Riga and spend about 1/3 of my time there.)

"Latvian as a language never lived better under the USSR". I've seen such a rich cultural heritage from the Latvian Soviet Republic era. Have a look at wonderful things like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kzsO_w8XIQ . Often a very poor cultural landscape afterwards.

But one can't deny russification during the Soviet era. 10.5% to 34% (1934-1989). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Latvia .

And clearly there is a minority of Russian speaking people in Riga neither able nor willing to speak even the most basic Latvian. Clearly, there are idiots on the Latvian speaking side too. I'll spare you the anecdotes.

But when it comes to cursing, they all seem to use Russian :-)

> I spoke about it with Edgar Leitan, who is native Latvian speaker, born in Rezekne, and is Professor of linguistics specializing in oriental languages, in Vienna University.

Is he, though? http://univie.academia.edu/EdgarLeitan says "University of Vienna, Department of South Asian, Tibet and Buddhist Studies, PhD Student"

Nothing personally against him, but "South Asian, Tibet and Buddhist Studies" is pretty far from Indo-European linguistics. Also, it's not unusual that native speakers have craziest ideas about their own languages. You don't automatically gain a deep insight into the history of your language just by being a native speaker.

He delivers Sanskrit course in Vienna.

Indeed, Latvian is a somewhat formalized version of Latgalian, so I'm not sure how that can be "truth worth discovery [sic]". If you haven't kept up with news back home, it might be of interest to you that there are MPs in the Parliament that are delivering their swear-in ceremony speeches in Latgalian now. More power to them. The rest of your comment, however, is a non sequitur.

We are a bit offtopic, but you may know that you cannot write down Latgalian identity in the Latvian national passport. Latgalians are prohibited to officially exist in Latvia 2.0.

And you very well can fix officially your Latgalian identity in Russia, surprise! Isn't it strange?

I don't find it strange at all, it plays very well into the "divide and conquer" approach to ethnic politics that Russia has put to use both in the past and more recently in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and elsewhere. For what it's worth, I disagree with there being ethnic markings in the Latvian Passport to begin with. I am in complete favor of removing them, not least because it would prevent Russian state from winning such cheap propaganda points.

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