Liv, a Balto-Ugric Language Often Said to have Died, Now Making a Comeback, Linguist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 2 – Over the last several decades, journalists have said that Liv, a Balto-Ugric language that was used in the past by several thousand people in Latvia, had died out (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/01/can-language-and-culture-survive-when.html). But Valts Ernštreits says those reports are wrong and that Liv is making a comeback.

            In a new article published in Estonia, the Latvian linguist who himself has Liv roots says that several dozen people of Liv background now speak that language fluently (novaator.err.ee/1609783134/liivi-keeleteadlane-liivi-keele-pusimajaamine-on-ajaloo-ime in Estonian; telegra.ph/Sohranenie-livskogo-yazyka--ehto-istoricheskoe-chudo-09-02 in Russian).

            The exact number of Livs at present is unknown: only 250 Latvian residents identified as themselves in the last census there, and most of these live now in major Latvian cities rather than on the Livonian coast which was their historical homeland and speak Latvian as their first language. If they know Liv at all, they use it only as a second language.

            But after two decades when journalists often reported that the last Liv speaker had died,  Ernštreits says, it is making a comeback with more than two dozen now using it, something that has become possible only because of the support of the Latvian government and Liv activists who have used concerts as a way of returning Livs to their culture and language.

            Although he does not describe their proficiency, the linguist says that the revival of Liv is evidence of how with government support a language many had written off can be revived. (For a discussion of his article and its implications, see mariuver.com/2025/09/02/kak-vozrozhdajut-vymershij-jazyk/.)