Editing Latvian language (section)

=== 20th century ===
After the death of Alexander III at the end of the 19th century, Latvian nationalist movements re-emerged. In 1908, Latvian linguists [[Kārlis Mīlenbahs]] and [[Jānis Endzelīns]] elaborated the modern Latvian alphabet, which slowly replaced the old orthography used before. Another feature of the language, in common with its sister language Lithuanian, that was developed at that time is that proper names from other countries and languages are [[orthographic transcription|altered phonetically]] to fit the phonological system of Latvian, even if the original language also uses the Latin alphabet. Moreover, the names are modified to ensure that they have noun declension endings, declining like all other nouns. For example, a place such as [[Lecropt]] (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village of [[Tillicoultry]] becomes Tilikutrija.

After the [[Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940|Soviet occupation of Latvia]], the policy of [[Russification]] greatly affected the Latvian language. At the same time, the use of Latvian among the [[Latvians in Russia]] had already dwindled after the so-called 1937–1938 [[Latvian Operation of the NKVD]], during which at least 16,573 ethnic Latvians and Latvian nationals were executed. In the 1941 [[June deportation]] and the 1949 [[Operation Priboi]], tens of thousands of Latvians and other ethnicities were deported from Latvia. Massive [[Immigration to Latvia|immigration]] from the [[Russian SFSR]], [[Ukrainian SSR]], [[Byelorussian SSR]], and other [[republics of the Soviet Union]] followed, primarily as a result of Stalin's plan to integrate Latvia and the other Baltic republics into the Soviet Union through [[Soviet colonialism|colonization]]. As a result, the proportion of the ethnic Latvian population within the total population was reduced from 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. In Soviet Latvia, most of the immigrants who settled in the country did not learn Latvian. According to the 2011 [[census]] Latvian was the language spoken at home by 62% of the country's population.<ref name="CSB 2013" /><ref name="62%" />

After the re-establishment of independence in 1991, a new policy of language education was introduced. The primary declared goal was the integration of all inhabitants into the environment of the official state language while protecting the languages of Latvia's ethnic minorities.<ref>{{cite book |title=Minority Protection in Latvia |date=2001 |publisher=Open Society Institute |url=http://providus.lv/article_files/1500/original/Min-LatviaEN.pdf?1331720008 |access-date=3 September 2019}}</ref>

Government-funded bilingual education was available in primary schools for ethnic minorities until 2019 when Parliament decided on educating only in Latvian. Minority schools are available for [[Russian language|Russian]], [[Yiddish language|Yiddish]], [[Polish language|Polish]], [[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]], [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]], [[Belarusian language|Belarusian]], [[Estonian language|Estonian]] and [[Romany language|Roma]] languages. Latvian is taught as a second language in the initial stages too, as is officially declared, to encourage proficiency in that language, aiming at avoiding alienation from the Latvian-speaking linguistic majority and for the sake of facilitating academic and professional achievements. Since the mid-1990s, the government may pay a student's tuition in public universities only provided that the instruction is in Latvian. Since 2004, the state mandates Latvian as the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Form 10–12) for at least 60% of class work (previously, a broad system of education in Russian existed).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Latvian Centre for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies |title=Analytical Report PHARE RAXEN_CC - Minority Education |date=2004 |publisher=Minority Education in Latvia |location=Vienna |url=https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/275-edu-latvia-final.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221010/https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/275-edu-latvia-final.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-10 |url-status=live |access-date=3 September 2019}}</ref>

The Official Language Law was adopted on 9 December 1999.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://likumi.lv/ta/en/en/id/14740-official-language-law|title=Official Language Law|website=[[likumi.lv]]|access-date=9 January 2018}}</ref> Several regulatory acts associated with this law have been adopted. Observance of the law is monitored by the [[Latvian State Language Center]] run by the Ministry of Justice.