Thread: Latvia

Originally Posted by bad manners

I don't understand this question.

You have got everything except writing, isn't it?

Originally Posted by bad manners

So perhaps we should concentrate on what has been called "the Latvian Language" for centuries -- I grant you that it may have changed and that some people in Latvia speak some other dialect -- but that is largely irrelevant.

Did you mean century?
The most similar language is the language of Letts but also this one has features of other languages. It's like a river with many creeks.

Let's make a trip to the ancient history. I tried to explain only basic steam of history.

Baltic land always was a land of the war. The ancient tribes were fighting with each other up to the times of Germans. Since times of Germans were settled in Baltic, local wars were between German-Tribes and tribes who don't admit German religion and rules, especially with Lithuanians who were and are the strongest resident nation in the Baltic.
Heathen tribes didn't want to admit religion. Germans gave to them castles and protection in exchange for christening but every time they washed it in a river. Since times of German oppression, tribes were closed in themselves. It gave them a chance to keep their languages which were taking some rules and words from German and other languages of neighbors.

Originally Posted by bad manners

Can you find any indication in that document that "official German language is not a natural one"?

Another important step towards the standardisation of the language was the creation of a generally binding orthography by the kingdom of Bavaria in 1879; the kingdom of Prussia followed one year later when Konrad Duden (1829-1911) created his famous dictionary "according to the new Prussian and Bavarian rules" which has been continued and adapted to language changes until today. This dictionary was regarded as the de-facto standard (and sometimes even the de-jure standard) of German orthography. Since 1880, the orthography has been subjected to two reforms in the first and the last years of the 20th century: In 1901, there was a three-day administrative conference accepting and continuing Duden's innovations, most notably abandoning writing th in German words such as Thal or Rath. The reform in the 1990ies consisted of a long series of academic and bureaucratic debates whose results have remained controversial because they were not an attempt to codify changes already in use but to invent new changes to orthography.

There are actions like "standardisation" and "invention" which are bound with non-natural changes.

Originally Posted by bad manners

What do you mean by "officially established"?

For example, America was discovered in 1498; the day of Slavic writing is May 24.