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Chapter 14. Citizenship and nationality

The situation of the users of revived Livonian in Latvia
  • Christopher Moseley
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Contested Languages
This chapter is in the book Contested Languages

Abstract

The last native-born speaker of Livonian, the aboriginal Baltic-Finnic language of Latvia, died in Canada in 2012. The last mother-tongue speaker on Latvian soil died some years before that. However, encouraged by Latvia’s nationality policy since it regained independence from the USSR in 1991, people of Livonian heritage are encouraged to identify themselves as Livonian even in their passports, and a new generation of heritage speakers is taking classes in the language. This is a reversal of former Soviet policy, one of benign neglect, and a refusal by the regime in the last years of the independent republic (1934–1940) to acknowledge or allow the use of the language.

Becoming citizens of the new republic was simultaneous, for many people, with declaring their nationality within the new state. This chapter traces the history of this small ethnic minority’s relationship with the state – Tsarist Russian, then Latvian, then Soviet, then Latvian again – and the vicissitudes that the spoken, written, and above all taught, Livonian language had to pass through to reach its present precarious status as a marginal heritage language in a relatively newly independent state in Europe.

The chapter will be illustrated with documentary evidence of the Livonian language’s use in writing and education in Latvia down to the present day.

Abstract

The last native-born speaker of Livonian, the aboriginal Baltic-Finnic language of Latvia, died in Canada in 2012. The last mother-tongue speaker on Latvian soil died some years before that. However, encouraged by Latvia’s nationality policy since it regained independence from the USSR in 1991, people of Livonian heritage are encouraged to identify themselves as Livonian even in their passports, and a new generation of heritage speakers is taking classes in the language. This is a reversal of former Soviet policy, one of benign neglect, and a refusal by the regime in the last years of the independent republic (1934–1940) to acknowledge or allow the use of the language.

Becoming citizens of the new republic was simultaneous, for many people, with declaring their nationality within the new state. This chapter traces the history of this small ethnic minority’s relationship with the state – Tsarist Russian, then Latvian, then Soviet, then Latvian again – and the vicissitudes that the spoken, written, and above all taught, Livonian language had to pass through to reach its present precarious status as a marginal heritage language in a relatively newly independent state in Europe.

The chapter will be illustrated with documentary evidence of the Livonian language’s use in writing and education in Latvia down to the present day.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction
  4. Chapter 1. What are contested languages and why should linguists care? 3
  5. Section 1. The broader picture
  6. Chapter 2. Contested languages and the denial of linguistic rights in the 21st century 21
  7. Chapter 3. Democracy 41
  8. Section 2. Identifying and perceiving contested languages
  9. Chapter 4. Mixing methods in linguistic classification 59
  10. Chapter 5. The cost of ignoring degrees of Abstand in defining a regional language 87
  11. Chapter 6. Deconstructing the idea of language 105
  12. Chapter 7. Surveying the ethnolinguistic vitality of two contested languages 125
  13. Chapter 8. Contested orthographies 143
  14. Chapter 9. Revitalising contested languages 163
  15. Section 3. Working with contestedness
  16. Chapter 10. Community-based language planning 185
  17. Chapter 11. Teaching Piedmontese 199
  18. Chapter 12. Publishing a grammar and literature anthology of a contested language 209
  19. Chapter 13. Which Sardinian for education? 221
  20. Section 4. Beyond contested languages
  21. Chapter 14. Citizenship and nationality 237
  22. Chapter 15. The language ideology of Esperanto 247
  23. Index 269
https://doi.org/10.1075/wlp.8.14mos

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction
  4. Chapter 1. What are contested languages and why should linguists care? 3
  5. Section 1. The broader picture
  6. Chapter 2. Contested languages and the denial of linguistic rights in the 21st century 21
  7. Chapter 3. Democracy 41
  8. Section 2. Identifying and perceiving contested languages
  9. Chapter 4. Mixing methods in linguistic classification 59
  10. Chapter 5. The cost of ignoring degrees of Abstand in defining a regional language 87
  11. Chapter 6. Deconstructing the idea of language 105
  12. Chapter 7. Surveying the ethnolinguistic vitality of two contested languages 125
  13. Chapter 8. Contested orthographies 143
  14. Chapter 9. Revitalising contested languages 163
  15. Section 3. Working with contestedness
  16. Chapter 10. Community-based language planning 185
  17. Chapter 11. Teaching Piedmontese 199
  18. Chapter 12. Publishing a grammar and literature anthology of a contested language 209
  19. Chapter 13. Which Sardinian for education? 221
  20. Section 4. Beyond contested languages
  21. Chapter 14. Citizenship and nationality 237
  22. Chapter 15. The language ideology of Esperanto 247
  23. Index 269
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