Livonian language

Uncommon card · No. 117565

Livonian (Livonian: līvõ kēļ or rāndakēļ) is a Finnic language that originated on the Livonian Coast of the Gulf of Riga, located in the north of the Kurzeme peninsula in Latvia but also used to be spoken in the Salaca River valley. Although its last known native speaker died in 2013, a child, Kuldi Medne, born in 2020, is reported to be a native speaker of Livonian. Her parents are Livonian language revival activists Jānis Mednis and Renāte Medne. Also, there are about 40 reported L2 speakers and 210 having reported some knowledge of the language. Possibly uniquely among the Uralic languages but similarly to Latvian and Lithuanian, Livonian has been described as a pitch-accent language (or restricted tone language, see below). Some ethnic Livonians are learning or have learned Livonian in an attempt to revive it, but because ethnic Livonians are a small minority, opportunities to use Livonian are limited. The Estonian newspaper Eesti Päevaleht erroneously announced that Viktors Bertholds...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Rantanen, T., Tolvanen, H., Roose, M., Ylikoski, J. & Vesakoski, O. (2022) “Best practices for spatial language data harmonization, sharing and map creation – A case study of Uralic” PLoS ONE 17(6):…, CC BY 4.0