ИСТИНА

Latvian and Irish, though belonging to different branches of Indo-European family, have much in common in their history, mainly from the socio-linguistic point; but, tracing back, one can find some, though not evident, parallels in a purely linguistic development. Since the early time, both languages underwent a strong substrate influence, which affected their phonology and morphology in a certain respect. Both Latvian and Irish were being influenced by various neighbour languages, non-Indo-European as well as Indo-European. In the case of Latvian we can easily trace the influence of Finno-Ugrian, Germanic and Slavic languages. In the case of Irish there was a number of non-Indo-European languages, though not clearly identified – namely of the Cruithni in the northern, of the Érainn in the southern and of the Gaillni in the eastern part of the island. Also there’s more than evident impact of Latin, Old Norse, Norman French and English in the later period. It was evidently this outer influence which resulted, at the earliest attested stage, in the most significant phonological changes, appeared in both Irish and Latvian – that is, the move of accent to the first syllable, which has tended to the fall of medial and final vowels (syncope and apocope). Concerning the further development of the Irish, these accentual changes finally led to a gradual erosion of the system of Indo-European nominal and verbal declensions, still well preserved in Baltic languages, and, after a short period of considerable phonologic complication and morphologic meshing (later subdued), paved a way to a modern tendency towards analytism. From the social point, the dead impact to the language was inflicted by a disappearing of national mono-ethnicity during the Norman period, the switching of the national aristocracy to English in the middle of the XVII century and so the dramatic drop of the social prestige of Irish. Last, but not least was the enduring dialectal divergence. Recurring to Latvian, one can suggest that the current multilingual situation can also lead to a gradual simplification of language – the tendency, which likely can be most clearly illustrated in the case of the creol Ventspils dialect with its extremely reduced morphology. Comparing to the case of Irish, the challenges to Latvian language were quite similar – late acquisition of national independence, non-native-speaking aristocracy and the significant percentage of population, not treating Latvian as a native tongue. In fact, one can be ready that even if the number of this people will try to switch to Latvian as their primary language, their speech will presumably represent a ‘lowered’ standard, only suited for basic communication.