Language

The official language of the Republic of Latvia is Latvian, which is spoken by about 58.2% of the population. The Latvian language, like Lithuanian and the extinct Old Prussian language, belongs to the Baltic language group of the Indo-european language family.

The Latgalian language or dialect is present in Latgale. Kuronian/Couronian is another dialect of Latvian spoken in Kurzeme, though less popular than Latgalian.

Russian is by far the most widespread minority language (37.5%), also spoken or at least understood by large sections of the non-Russian population; most of Latvia's minorities are considered "Russian - speaking" by some political parties, while ethnically being Belarusians, Ukrainians and so on.