Latvian Language Research Articles

Baltic Collections in the United Kingdom: Past, Present, and Future

SUMMARY The paper presents the results of a survey carried out in 2000 to establish the extent of Baltic collections in United Kingdom libraries: academic, public, and émigré community libraries. Baltic collections are understood in this paper to mean materials in the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian languages; however, reference is also made to materials in other languages about the history, society, and cultures of these countries. The paper begins with a short introduction to the history of Baltic library collections in the U.K., and then looks at the current situation, seeking to map Baltic collections at U.K. libraries, and establish collection size and strengths. Current collecting patterns are examined in the light of research trends, and the impact of electronic information sources is considered. Finally, prognostications are made about the future of Baltic library collections in the U.K., taking into account number of users, political factors, and the move towards increased inter-library cooperation occasioned by diminishing acquisitions budgets.

THE MORTALITY BY DISEASES IN LATYIA IEDZĪVOTĀJU MIRSTĪBA NO SLIMĪBĀM LATVIJĀ

In Latvia the mortality of population in Latvia is very high. In some districts the mortality is several times higher than the birth rate. This leads to a negative population increment. One of the causes of death is the heart — circulation diseases. The mortality in different regions varies. Investigation the economic, cultural, geographical ethnic and social situation are used to solve the reasons of the unfavourable demographic situation. Special attention has been carried out to investigate the mortality rate and the indicators of adaptation to the market economy in various rural regions in Latvia. On X-axis is the mortality of residents from heart-circulation diseases in different regions of Latvia, on the Y-axis - various indicators of education, economic, social and cultural development.It has been shown that in various rural regions in Latvia with different mortality of heart-circulation diseases there are differences with the various indicators of economic life and education level. In regions with higher percentage of residents with higher or secondary education the mortality by heart-circulation diseases are lower. This coincides also with higher pre school children enrolment in pre school establishments, and with lower enrolment in auxiliary and trade schools. In these regions children enter presumably schools with Russian instruction language. These regions are located in the eastern part of Latvia - Latgale, were the Russian speaking population has increased in the occupation period of Latvia not only as a result of migration of other Soviet Republics, but also as a lack of adequate school politics. Thus for example in the district of Daugavpils the most population have Latvian citizenship, however they enter the schools with Russian instructional language. The prestige of Latvian language is increasing in the latest period, presumably as a result of the universities in Daugavpils and Rēzekne. As a consequence the children enter more schools with the Latvian instructional language. Not only the mortality from heart - circulation diseases is increased in theses regions of Latvia, but also the total mortality. The birth rate is decreased and the increment of population has a negative sign (the population is dying out with a rate, which in Latgle is higher than 1% per year. High mortality coincides with lower education and with lower success in economic activities. Between them is the lower yield of cow’s milk and agriculture output and the road quality. It should be mentioned that the fertility of soil in the districts of higher mortality is lower than in the districts of lower incidence of mortality by heart - circulation diseases. Various economic activities in regions with high ore low mortality of heart and circulation diseases were very different. Also predisposition to some other diseases, as diseases of gastrointestinal tract and suddenly poisoning and mortality as a result of external factors has been increased. That served to get motivation that all efforts to improve education including pre school children establishments are really important for Latvia.In Latvia during the post-war time pre school establishments increased each year. At the school year 1988/89 the enrolment size was 140000, but it dropped very rapidly after 1990 because the schools were very dear in comparison with the earnings ofparents. Also the decrease ofpopulation has been observed in all districts of Latvia.

De‐Sovietisation of Latvian Textbooks Made Visible

Abstract This article examines the political, cultural and social changes in two Latvian language textbook editions, one published in 1980 during the Soviet era, and the other in 1994 in the newly independent Republic of Latvia. The following findings stemming from the quantitative and qualitative analysis are presented: political information; cultural information; geographical information; role models and heroes; and spatial scene. The study suggests that the process of the de‐Sovietisation of Latvian textbooks does not imply depolitization, since one form of political reproduction, teaching Soviet citizenship, appears to have been entirely replaced by another form of political reproduction, Latvian citizenship.

Plague in Latvian language texts of the eighteenth century

Plague in Latvian language texts of the eighteenth century

The Didactic Ideas of K. Dekēns on Developmental Education

K. Dekēns (1866-1942) was a very well known Latvian educationist who exerted appreciable influence on the development of the Latvian school and pedagogical thought. He created Latvia's first Manual of Pedagogy in the Latvian language, a teaching guide for preschool education, methods literature for teaching the Latvian language, and a number of textbooks (Latvian language, Russian language, arithmetic, nature studies, history, geography) for the elementary school grades, and he wrote books and articles on the history of pedagogy and various issues in public education. He studied the history of the Latvian school and the history of pedagogy.

Staten Island Rescue

It is not often that a dentist becomes involved with intrigue . . . much lesson an international scale, but this is exactly what happened to Dr. Juris Svarcbergs, a member of the United States Public Health Service commissioned corps. Doctor Svarcbergs is a Latvian-born Ameri­ can citizen whose family was forced to flee their home in Riga shortly after the Soviet sei­ zure of their homeland on the Baltic Sea in 1944. In the next five years, the Svarcbergses lived in refugee camps throughout Europe be­ fore immigrating to the United States. In 1969 Doctor Svarcbergs graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and entered the Public Health Service where his knowledge of his native tongue, the Latvian language, proved to be critical to a young Soviet defector. Early last summer, the US Coast Guard re­ ceived an emergency call for help: outside New York waters there was a Russian trawler with a sailor aboard, comatose from an overdose of medicines. The “sailor” was in fact pretty, 25year-old stewardess Daina Palena, who was im­ mediately flown to the PHS hospital at Staten Island, where a team of doctors worked to bring her to consciousness amidst a throng of newsmen and Soviet officials. After doctors succeeded in doing this, Miss

Remarks on the Geography of Language

ANGUAGE exercises a decisive influence on the composition and distribution of intercommunicating social units-on who talks to whomand thus on the activities in which men are able to participate in groups. Without linguistic communication no organized social undertaking can proceed, and without a single, shared language such an undertaking becomes cumbersome and subject to many potential misunderstandings. There are only a few nations-for example, Belgium, Canada, and Switzerlandwhere leadership is successfully shared by two speech communities or more. I once heard a prominent American geographer ask whether the Latvians spoke Russian or German or perhaps a mixture of both. His unawareness that a Latvian language exists, and that it is affiliated to a well-studied and important branch of Indo-European-the Baltic-is all too typical of a large part of the geographical profession.' The structure and internal characteristics of language are properly the concern of professional linguists, and the function of language in communication is traditionally studied by some of the social scientists. But the distribution of linguistic usages and of social groupings based thereon is another important aspect of language, which is of major consequence for the geographer. Linguistic heterogeneity is one of the most obvious, most absolute, and most fixed of the categories of diversity that apply to human populations. The sharp discontinuities and the relatively uniform blocs that characterize modern linguistic communities strongly influence human behavior, and particularly the association of people and their interaction. Political, social, and economic structures are often closely correlated with linguistic usage, and distributional patterns of these phenomena tend to coincide strikingly with linguistic areal patterns. It is my purpose to set forth here some of the understandings of linguistic geography as pursued by the linguist; to consider the categories and classifi-