Quote Originally Posted by nulle View Post
Possibly because they learn Swedish and do not ask Belarussian to be official language, like some Russians here in Latvia.
It's amazing actually - one day someone asked me directions in Russian - how to get to the bus - I answered him in Latvian - he did not understand ANYTHING.
How the hell you can live in a country and do not know local language that is spoken by majority?
He might have been Russian or Belarussian, did you think of that? Someone told me that it's a real problem for tourists from Russian speaking countries.The Latvians simply respond in Latvian and obviously they don't understand a word.
He could have asked you first if you spoke Russian.
On the other hand, you could have tried in Russian or simply said "I don't speak it"

In Finland there is a group of Swedish speakers who can't really speak Finnish, because they work with other Swedish speakers and socialise with others too. They learn it in school, but like Latvian it's a hard language and since they can get by in Swedish they don't really make the effort. The Finnish people don't really care about this though. It's much more of a problem for the person who can't speak Finnish, than it is for them - they can simply say - "sorry" and walk away. It happens to me occassionally when I go there.

I agree it's surprising but I think your views on this are completely tangled up with your feelings about the past, about the USSR etc. Personally I think it's really cool that Latvians are bilingual. And it's not like anyone is forcing you to speak Russian against your will. All I am saying is that the state should be bilingual because of the composition of its citizens. Not that anyone should be forced to speak Russian who doesn't want to.