Livonian

Livonian is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, historically spoken by the Livonian people along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea in the historical region of Livonia, which now lies in Latvia and parts of southern Estonia. It is closely related to Estonian and Finnish and forms part of the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. The language traditionally occupied communities along the Livonian coast, including coastal towns and villages in Latvia’s Kurzeme region.

Today Livonian is considered critically endangered. The community of fluent speakers has diminished due to language shift to Latvian and Russian, assimilation, emigration, and historical population changes. There are only a small number of elderly native speakers remaining, with additional people who have learned limited Livonian or are interested in revival. In response, scholars and community groups have undertaken documentation projects, dictionaries, grammars, and language courses, and Livonian media and cultural events have emerged to support revival.

Livonian is written using the Latin alphabet. Efforts have aimed to standardize orthography and develop educational materials, along with online resources and initiatives to teach vocabulary and phrases. The language faces ongoing challenges from small speaker communities and competition from dominant regional languages, but it remains a focus of language preservation and cultural heritage efforts for the Livonian people and their diaspora.

Related languages include Estonian, Finnish, and Votic.