Indo-European · ISO 639-3 lav · lv
Latvian Language latviešu
Latvian is an Indo-European language spoken by about 1.5 million people in 1 country. It is an official language of Latvia. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Latvian is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Latvian
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Balto-Slavic
- Latvian
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Latvian language
Latvian (latviešu) is spoken by about 1.5 million people. It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Balto-Slavic group within the Balto-Slavic branch.
Where is Latvian spoken?
Latvian is used in 1 country. The largest communities live in Latvia (1.1 million). More than half of the population speaks it in Latvia — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Latvian is an official language in 1 country: Latvia.
Writing system and status
Latvian is written in the Latin script. Glottolog classifies it as threatened, meaning fewer children learn it than in the past.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Belarusian and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 lv, ISO 639-3 lav.
Frequently asked questions about Latvian
How many people speak Latvian?
Where is Latvian spoken?
In which countries is Latvian an official language?
What language family does Latvian belong to?
What is Latvian called in Latvian?
Is Latvian an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.