Language

Lettish, commonly known as Latvian, is an Eastern Baltic language spoken in the Baltic region and is a member of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. That is one of the Latvia culture, customs and etiquette. In addition to being one of the official languages of the European Union, it is the language of the Latvian people. There are 100,000 native Latvian speakers outside of Latvia and roughly 1.3 million in Latvia. In total, 2 million people, or 80% of Latvia's population, speak Latvian. Around 1.16 million of them, or 62% of Latvia's population, speak it at home; however, outside of the Latgale Region, over 90% of people use it as their first language in villages and towns.

While Old Prussian, an extinct Baltic language, and Lithuanian, a neighboring language, are the languages that Latvian is most closely linked to as a Baltic language, Latvian has developed more quickly. It is also debatable whether Latvian and Kursenieki, which are mutually intelligible, should be regarded as varieties or different languages. The Lord's Prayer was translated into Latvian and printed in Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia universalis (1544) for the first time in the language's history.