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Latvian stands firm against Russian. | ||
Tags: Latvian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 89 of 91 21 March 2012 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Politics and ethnicities are insaparable from sociolinguistics. As well as history. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 90 of 91 21 March 2012 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Personally, I think a better counter-example to make the case for official Russian in Latvia is official Arabic in Israel. The proportion of Arabic speakers in Israel is comparable to the proportion of Russian speakers in Latvia, there are at least 40 times more Arabic speakers in the world than Hebrew native speakers, Israel is the only country with Hebrew as its primary language, and there is a great deal of mutual mistrust and hostility between the two communities based on historical grievances. Yet Hebrew isn't an endangered language and its existing speakers are not abandoning it en masse in favour of Arabic. Perhaps by granting Arabic official status the State of Israel acknowledged the fact that it can never completely assimilate its Arab population into its mainstream culture and that it's best to just let them have their own separate culture. There are striking similarities between the ways in which two communities can adhere to vastly different interpretations of the same historical events in Israel and in the Baltic countries ("War of Independence" vs. "The Catastrophe"; "Liberation of the Soviet Baltic peoples" vs. "Soviet Occupation of the Baltic states"), so similar arguments can be made in Latvia as well (I've heard them made about Estonia during the whole Bronze Night unrest, and one article I read addressed them to both Estonian and Russian nationalists and talked about the futility of trying to impose their historical narratives on each other). But then again, and as a libertarian/anarchist I don't place much value in the concept of a national/official language, and as a Russian with no relatives in Latvia I don't give two shits about what happens there, so feel free to ignore my thoughts on the subject :D 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 91 of 91 21 March 2012 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
So you disagree with how the rules are written; that's fine. You should take that up for discussion. It doesn't mean you or the others in this discussion can break the rules. Discussing politics is clearly against the rules, no matter how much it's intertwined with sociolinguistics. EDIT: Sorry for the hobby moderating. I'll alert moderators and stay out of this. Edited by Ari on 21 March 2012 at 12:51pm 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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