General information

The Latgalian language is spoken in Latgale, a region otherwise known as Polish Livonia before the Partitions of Poland. Latgale is located in the eastern part of Latvia. Latgalian is spoken by approximately 150 – 200 thousand people.
When it comes to its range, the language covers almost the entire area where Upper Latvian languages can be encountered. Therefore, it is spoken predominantly in Latgale, as well as in the north-east part of Vidzeme region and eastern Selonia. A large Latgalian community lives nowadays in Riga.


Regions and towns of Latvia (map ed.: Jacek Cieślewicz; based on: folkcostume.blogspot.com)
[towns; Courland, Semigallia, Selonia, Livonia, Latgalia]

Apart from Latvia, Latgalian is a native language used in the vicinity of Pytalovo town (Пыталовo) in Russia. It is also used in Siberia, mainly around cities of Krasnojarsk, Omsk and Tomsk, where nearly a thousand Latgalian people live (Andronov and Lejkuma 2006: 478Andronow & Lejkuma 2006 / komentarz/comment/r /
Andronov, A.V. & L. Lejkuma 2006. "Łatyszi i łatgal’cy Sibiri: jazyk i kul’tura", w: A.A. Hippis i in. (red). Bałto-sławjanskie issledowanija . Sbornik naucznych trudow XVII. Moskwa: Indrik.
) and among the Latgalian diaspora in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US (Mercator 2009: 9Mercator 2009 / komentarz/comment/r /
Mercator 2009 = Lazdiņa, Sanita, Heiko F. Marten & Ilga Šuplinska. The Latgalian language in education in Latvia. (Mercator Regional Dossiers). Leeuwarden: Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning. [dostępne na: http://www.mercator-research.eu/research-projects/regional-dossiers/090603.regional_dossier_latgalian_in_latvia.pdf]
).

The international ISO 639-3 code for Latgalian is ltg.

Linguonyms

Several names are used when referring to the Latgalian language:

in Polish: język łatgalski, język latgalski, known before as język łotewki inflant polskich, język inflantsko-łotewski, or simply język łotewski

• in English: the Latgalian language, the Letgalian language
• in Latgalian: latgalīšu volūda or latgalīšu mēle (volūda/mēle ‘language’), latgaļu volūda, till the beginning of the 20th century also latvīšu volūda/mēle ‘the Latvian language’
• in Latvian: latgaliešu valoda, latgaliešu dialekt (colloquial name)
• in Russian: латгальский язык
• in German: Lettgallisch, Latgalisch