Riga girls: my impression

So your solution is to make russian language the second language in Latvia? I really don't bite that excuse why your parents don't speak Latvian, why my parents speak in russian then? Are they smarter or just tried or were forced to try to learn it. I am 100% certain that the doctor or pharmacist would explain your old/abused parents what the meicine are for. That was just a lame example, probably introduced by Usakovs party. Even I speak in intermediate russian.

I admit, that Latvia hasn't moved forward like it should of, BUT it is mostly because old politicians are still doing business the soviet style - corruption, bribes etc, etc, thank god we don't go as far as Putin and get rid off people who talk too much opposite.

I have not forgotten about other minorities in Latvia, they just don't try to make their language the second official language.

About our non-original traditions, of course, and as i mentioned before, latvians have influenced from foreign ruling powers, btw all solstices are international, the sun and nature is the same everywhere and we celebrate the same with farming and agriculture related events. Everyone, all countries, all human kind have influenced from each other but that doesn't exclude our rights to celebrate events and call them our own.

Another thing - why do you keep saying nazi here and facits there, it is such a russian interest brain washing that you have gone through, yes, i am mentioning my precious latvian too often but you are obsessed with nazi and fasicts talk.

Well, I think that american guy was right, we should forget the past and accept us all as Latvians and work together for better future. I have friends whose grandparents are root russians and it doesn't stop us of being friends, they don't call me nazi and they don't care that i honor Strelnieku diena.

Yes, I am partially brain washed by latvian national government and partially by my parents and grandparents experiences, I rarely take interest about how the other party (meaning you) feel and what makes you feel that way, I admit it, can you admit that you are too a product of propaganda from the news that you watch? I don't doubt that you are well educated, your english is good and you have read literature, I see that, BUT there is always the other side, the other side of an event, of a war, history is just someones interpretation, history is not a person.

About me being away - I studied abroad, I was an Intern abroad, I studied tourism and hospitality business and it is where i work now, I am moving into direction of designing tour packages around NW America, my target audience is Eastern and Northern Europeans. I would love to get some revenue for Latvia too by bringing americans to the Baltics. Maybe you get it, maybe not, why I must be physically here for time being.

What is your solution for better Latvia and do you even care? Are you going to leave the place when your parents are no longer in a need of your care?

I think you mentioned either Stalin or Lenin, forgive me if i am wrong, i have no proof, I think it was in a context about some monument that has been removed in Riga.

I didn't start about them, I don't care, I wish people moved on faster and forgot about the past and the sufferings they went through. We are no longer upset with sweeds or germans because there is no live witnesses, with soviets there are still a lot of live latvians and gews and pols that went through really hard times. And I know the facts about history, I wish I din't have to listen about them that much when i was growing up. I know what soviets did to russians and ukranians etc etc and i always correct americans when they refer to russians as soviets, there where soviets in France and U.K. It didn't originate in Russia.

My family is still in Latvia, they chose a different carrier path, they work for Latvian government via EU environmental funds. My dad exports traditional wood houses to Norway, it is all for a better Latvia. What is your job if you don't mind me asking, are you doing anything for that hole Latvia? Is it something to do with "latvian girls"? These photos are kinda slutty and makes the wrong impression about latvian women. Yes, we are beautiful but that doesn't mean that we are easy. There is a stereotype about easy latvian girls that cultivated among foreign man in a lot of cases those are not latvian girls but girls that is a part of the minorities in Latvia, but that is a different story.

Anyway - It was interesting talking to you, I can tell that you have educated opinion about these issues but your political side is more than clear to me and it is opposite to mine.

Remember - there is my opinion, your opinion and then there is the truth.

Wow, that makes me really nervous. If you look at my two yesterday postings, I was never claiming that,, what you say IS your Kremlin propagabda actually. In my postings, there is even NO MENTION to the Russian language as the "second language in Latvia". I don't know what you are talking about.


Yes. Your parents were FORCED to learn Russian, as my Parents, too (they are NOT Russians btw), because Russian Empire i.e. USSR gave them opportunities at that time of learning. Latvian language, nowadays, gives no opportunities!


It is truly sick. You refer, all the time, to USSR, to Stalin, to Ushakovs - who, btw, in 20 years of "independance" gave the opportunity to learn the Latvian language for free to all the foreigners at the time so claimed "National" opposition didn't even invest in it!.. He was Ushakovs indeed! - it only shows how your brains are washed up and down and are not opened to the DEMOCRATIC world where ALL people have RIGHTS to claim their rights!!!

I don't care about your Russian at all, we speak here in English, be so kind to express your thoughts in Internatinal Language #1 and skip your sick emotions about your minority language HERE, just forget about it HERE, on these forums - it seems even ON THESE ENGLISH FORUMS - you can't skip from them!!..


FUUUCK! Don't you sound TOO controversial to yourself?? You speak about Putin, but at the same time, you agree - current Latvian politicians are THOROUGHLY communists, the same old communists as they were 20, 30... 70 years ago!! That makes me TRULY suspended - you call for a Freedom, but still, you agree that Latvia is communists country, by THIS time!!! You shall take your place in the madhouse!!

Soviet style! Look AT YOUR SELF - you are THE SAME kind of Young Communism Taking Over This Poor Territory THESE DAYS!


This is truly F*CKED. Now, what you are hoping for?.. Chinese, coming to these land, SHOULD BECOME LATVIANS? Belgians, Germans, Italains coming to these land - WHAT??... In the same genre, Ukrainians, Poles, Belorussians living here, should transform into BEING "CALLED LATVIANS"? Russians, Old-Believers, living here for 300 years, SHOULD BECOME LATVIANS?..... Are you crazy or what?... What do you expect??? OTHER NATIONS TO BECOME LATVIANS on this poor soured land?? I know, many Nationals giving such opportunities, to be called "Latvian" in a passport "officially" - FOR WHAT?? Do you want to TRANSFORM me INTO Latvian from my mixture nation??? It won't go!


Nobody disallows you from that, actually! And it never did happen, even in USSR times. You are free to do that! But -- even from your recent postings, EVERYONE could conclude, YOU are TRYING TO FORCE your traditions to EVERYONE living in this multi-cultural land! Everyone is the same kind free as YOU, everyone is up to celebrate this ON HIS/HER OWN as you! You DON'T HAVE to force it!! Do you understand it? It seems, not...


It seems you don't even KNOW how "Fascism" is written in English properly, but I know. You don't even write Latvian or Russian terms from the Capital letter, but I do. It says quite a lot. You seems to be NOT quite educated person at all. Just a young troll coming out and say what is purely ENTERED into his/her brain by mass-media. You are wrong in choosing the right place to talk, kid.

If you don't know what Fascism and Nazism are about, we don't even have to talk. You just don't know who I am, and it is very sour.


Just say "Good bye" in your "literary theoretical" thoughts. I can't add nothing to THAT.


Seriously speaking, that's THE MAIN reason I have built this forum, with my friends and partners, to SPEAK about the better Latvia. But it seems, so far, the "better Latvia" is to appear raped by Asian, Arab, Russian, and the other 3rd world "newcomers". I would truly KNOW more about ideas how to rack this land up. And this is NOT, definitely, to make this country a land of prostitution. So far, unfortutately, there is no quite a solution coming up. I simply don't know.

Definitely, there is no way to just leave this land and come to build up other countries from scratch. Like you do. I want to stay in this country, as it's the country of mine being born, so I SHOULD do anything for it - else I would be born in ANOTHER country, don't you agree?? But I have no answers to my questions so far. Who knows - may be EVEN YOU could give me such answers, I still continue to hope! The hope dies last, you know!..


That is fine you understand this... I may understand it, too... people are TOO WIDE concerned about their own brains, they often substitute the Facts to Nothing... but that's not the case for a TRULY thinking person...


Oh common... let's not start this... I am feeling TRULY SICK about Woods exported to other countries... especially if we talk about Norway which I actually HATE (my opinion, IMHO, it's not not about all other nice people on this forum)... but yes... I must admit, Latvia SHOULD NOT do this, Latvia SHOULD keep their lands untouched... unfortunately, it went TOO FAR with no way back... already...


You are definitely RIGHT at here, and I wish you as a small un-notable person SHOULD do this... Definitely, ethnic thinking Russians are NOT Soviet, and if you may know, the Soviet Union was not "built" by Russians at all, Lenin had thoroughly Jewish roots, Stalin is Georgian, Gorbachev is purely Ukrainian Jude - SO... I am still not sure WHY In Latvia, there are SO MUCH RESISTANCE is coming AGAINST RUSSIANS, I am quite really surprised on it - possibly, because I am a "mixed", not the Root One!..


Like you may expect from my Latvian C-2 Category, I am quite an experienced person and I administrate the quite big of IT system in a private company; and actually, I have chosen this forum engine (which is miniBB) because I know it's done by a very professional person, Paul P., who comes from Latvia as well, and Paul is a "legend" in the open source world on the worldwide arena, he has its software registered in US, he helped us quite lot to make this forum truly independant, despite rather only rare people in the whole world knows that Latvians could build truly secured, independant forum software, just because they are not paid off and sponsored by giants. So I am a patriot of Latvia, in all aspects!!.. You may be wrong in your thinking sometimes... just study the question more carefully before you come with your expectations...


Definitely, YES... We must tie to some false "brand" to explore it from the other kind of thinking... actually, at the time of creating of this forum, that was the only brand... and sorry to say, but by now, it's the only one so far In Latvia...

Do you think so? You don't even have the photo of your own. Again, there are no FACTS coming against... so your words may be considered fake... the same way as those photos... despite they are real, how anyone would know?.. AND WHAT IS NO FAKE?.. That's the question of all times!


hah!.. A stereotype that never been let to be opposite!.. Fake.


Sure!

We just don't to drive into personal beings. Everybody is up to their opinion; and like Socrat said... "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." - so I must be lucky you didn't IGNORE my opinions, thanks for that!..

Nuff said, Plomb. Too emotional and aggressive as always, but here you go: a strong man with his own position.

You have mentioned Norway and that "you hate it" - I may expect, why it is so. I have been to Norway for a couple of times, just like a tourist, and it appeared quite a nice, calm country- from the first look. If we go deeper, Norway is quite suspicious country. They have very strange family values, something incest-related is obviously in background. For me, as the person who likes "mixed" nations like you, and who is up to more "standard" family and relationship between woman and man, it's not acceptable. Also, if we mention Anders Breivik, he may become truly a new hero of human race. Because he clearly showed the world the flaw in liberal/tolerant democracy system, and he continues to do so even while being a prisoner. This tolerance kills people, actually. We must be more strong in our visions, but we must study the subjects well before we are getting stoned in such visions.

As about Latvia to become better... for me it is obvious, that Latvia has no science technologies, no even "high" technologies, rather nothing globally productive and exciting, may be something related to pharmacy and small things in IT, but comparing to the whole world, it's a giglet. The only obvious benefit Latvia has, it's a geographical location. It's up to the East neighbors from one side, and West neighbors from the other side. But the current national politics in Latvia destroys this "bridge" using quite violent methods.

Honestly, I am not sure why so many people voted against Russian language as the official one, because so many people speaks and knows it here well; I already know a few words, too, like SPATZIBA, POZHALASTA, IDINAKHOOY. Despite I never knew this language and culture before, but my Latvian mate comes from a mixed family as well, and she knows Latvian, Russian, and knowing me she also starts to know English (but that's even a question of what language do we speak in family - it's a mixture of everything, actually, and the most important that we understand each other, not the "clear" language we speak). I suspect, most of Latvians also know Russian, because they surprisingly are very bad in English, but knowing Russian, at least, they could communicate with their Eastern neighbor well, and get truly lots of knowledge from there. I believe, this is inherited from the USSR times and runs well by now. So why have they voted AGAINST the second official language, whatever it could be, truly appears a political and so very false decision. In Belgium, we have three official languages which are French, Dutch and German, but mostly, almost all native Belgians ALSO know English. Trust me- coming from a multi-cultural land, I can be sure that adding more languages to the official line would ONLY HELP this country, would help to unite more people - unfortunately, Latvia cut off any good from this already.

So if we speak about the Latvian language opportunities which, btw is quite difficult and sometimes not logical in learning for foreigners, then the only opportunity of Latvian language is to work in the official Latvian institutions while living in Latvia - no other country in the world will provide this opportunity. And we take a look over small piece of cake Latvia, there are not so big opportunities to live here at all. We are considering even more often to move from there to another land, which is more suitable by taxes, which is more opened to foreigners, which is not an incommunicative Globus. Latvia had all chances to become such country even when a "Latvian girls story" started to rotate; but now, even legalizing prostitution will not help it a lot, I think. This land is exhausted on its own, by government, politicians, brain washing, wrong people votings, limited human rights etc.

More to speak, more tourism propaganda on good objects would save Latvia, but NOW it needs truly big investments. For example, just recently I was astonished to know about Mark Rotko exhibitions recently opened in Daugavplis of Latvia; they have invested MILLIONS to open these galleries, presenting his original works... Definitely, we must take our time to visit this town sometimes; they said in the summer it is full of sexy young chicks going out in just small panties outside the only problem is to get there, because Daugavpils is quite away from Riga, and traveling by these shitty roads up there could kill our little car. And let's say, Kuldiga could become a truly branding "medieval" town if they would renovate it completely, so far it's not promoted like the town of tourism at all, rather rare people know about its waterfall, there are no live place for tourists to relax... And take a look at Ventspils - in the summer time, it's a great time to spend on their nudist beach and relax over the city; but again, it becomes boring in just 2-3 days. Legalize Marijuana, then Latvia would truly become more developing!.. But not - as I understand, government tries to protect the lite drugs like they would protect from a nuclear bomb... Shitmakers.

So, you ask: how to make Latvia better? The question is: think on yourself... you were having TONS OF SUGGESTIONS in the past years, you were cutting them all off, but yet speaking Latvian and promoting quite a poor culture... you have now what you have in result: nothing special.

Thanks for the opinions above.

It is clear now how one proofs-filled opinion could make that one having just "theoretical" background inside.

Now I tend to believe Latvia is not just that country it;s being advertised in mass media thoroughly the world. It appears to be just another "advertisement" staying far away from the "natural" image.

Pictures made for this forum, and published on this forum, and finally, this conversation above made me think something is truly wrong with this country,

so I will not make my investments to it so far.

Good luck.

Going_Away
So let me see.. You judged a whole country's worth and business viability through a forum discussion? You sound like an irrational cunt. And no, your hooker tips do not count as an investment so I suggest you crumple them and shove them up your rectum.

As a foreign man who lives in Latvia (not in Riga,) and is in the middle of the long hard process of learning its beautiful and idiosyncratic language, I just wanted to add my two cents as an outsider.

My other half is Latvian, and she speaks Latvian, Russian and English fluently.
We communicate now in a fifty/fifty language we call Latglish, but as we now live here full time, I want to move my Latvian up a notch, and become more fluent, so I can speak more with her friends and family. Most of them speak Russian to some degree, but although Latvian makes no economic or business sense, this is Latvia. I have no interest in learning Russian, because my wife is Latvian, her family and friends are Latvian, and Latvian is the language of Latvia, not the language of its former oppressors.

Incidentally, I have learned several semetic languages, as well as a couple of Europeans ones, and Latvian is by far the hardest - but it is also the most beautiful. I love its range of expression, it is a poetic language with such soft shades and sounds. I've found in learning it, that I often don't know the regular form of words, because you only ever hear them in the diminutive. It's sort of cool to hear two grown burly men, speaking to their mates only in diminutive ''Janiti, can you pass the little-wittle-chainsaw, so I can chop this treeey-weeeyey down.''

Latvia has its problems, but I still find it an attractive country to live in (but don't mention the oncoming Euro.) In years of moving all over Africa and Europe, it is the first place I ever really felt home. Latvians don't often realise how rich in wonders this country is. Every wood hides a treasure, every road leads to something interesting, every time I leave the house I find something more. Places like Kuldiga aren't found every day - I must have walked around a hundred times and we always find something new.

It's not a great place to come to get rich, but it is still a wonderful place to live for those who like to do things for themself, make their houses, grow their vegetables, and lead a slow paced life with the beauty of four distinct and stunning seasons and minimal worries. (This is for me, on my little scale - which is the way tens of thousands of omitas and tantes are living all over Latvia.)

I also (obviously - I came here for a short stay, and settled down) really like Latvian people - they are unique in a way that most Europeans aren't. There are bad eggs, and wasters, but there are in any country - it is better to concentrate on the friendly, well moralled people who make up the majority of people (especially women) here. Whether people here realise it or not, they are innately nice and generally interesting people. I also love the fact that almost everyone, (again - whether they realise it or not) is an artist or a craftsperson. Folk values, skills, arts and crafts are really well known here, in a way that they are not in my country.

Everyone else seems to be leaving, so that leaves more space for these people who like it.

Foreign man in love with Latvia

To the Guest above: thanks for your impressive message! I must say I've traveled over Latvia to look exactly for the same place like you described: a calm and peaceful country of a small nation lost in the middle of great battle continents. You are right, less people are staying here and many of them are going further with no way back, and this truly creates "the circle of related" citizens which are up to the primitive work or native arts. The Latvians' Latvia.

But let's not forget that in our world, rather there are no people that could rely on themselves only. Specially after we got a little child, I understood the other side of this country, the side of depression. Even less specialists are staying here, and when taking a clue on the modern medicine, you can't rely on the witches. It's stupid. Now what do you think of how Latvian drivers take their roads? I am scared of "craft-workers" appearing on the big road, they drive like pigs fly. Taking a look over other things, you may agree that besides kind of "unique" culture and poor arts, and of course, THE LANGUAGE, this land has nothing in common to the civilized world. Latvian has not even something standing closely to such a development.

Now look at your very personal message. Half of it relates to Latvian Language which gets me annoyed each time when this topic comes up. People are too concentrated on their young and imperfect language. As you may know, the Latvian language it its current form has been surfaced less than 100 years ago. By now it has less than 200,000 words and 50% of them are just repetitive to the foreign languages, incl. German, English and Russian. I know English is consisting of at least the 1,000,000 words by now and it's heavy being monitored by the English-related officials. That's what I call "the support" of the Great Language, which slowly but surely takes a leading role in the whole world.

On another hand, you clearly propose that Latvian makes no economic or business sense - wow! So what's the f*cking next? No economic, no business sense... no technologies, no education, no even special arts... and people just SPEAK... not even listening to others, they JUST SPEAK. Where do you think they will get in result? To the nation of speakers?


Oh common! Latvia ALWAYS had oppressors, and actually, Latvian dialect was first transcribed by the German pastors in the 18th century. Without German pastors, there would be NO "Latvian" language at all. By that time, any historical source you will find, only mentions the fact of existence of such dialect (btw consisting of other dialects like Livu, Latgalu, Selu), not even the transcription of it.

On Google books, there are offered some good scans, check for example for Volständiges lettisches Lexicon (1772) or Lettisches Lexikon by Gotthard Friedrich Stender (1789) - what would be the reason that German pastors were studying local slaves dialects? The One reason: to make them even more obedient, to let them scare of the things never existed, to make them PAY for the good life of Germans.

Further to that, when Russian Empire was an "oppressor" of this land in the 19th-20th century, Latvian language truly got a higher point, Russian Empire invested a lot in its development. And if we speak about the purpose of it, it was the same: to use the original dialect as the weapon to wash up the brains.

Now Latvians appear to wash the brains to Latvians themselves. What a Perfect achievement.

Saying that "have no interest in learning Russian, because my wife is Latvian, her family and friends are Latvian, and Latvian is the language of Latvia" you actually make yourself a very limited person, very limited to just the small circle of involved people, and so you are seeing no further than the end of nose. MY choice, personally, is to study leading languages, if I'd have a time for learning languages, I'd preferably studied Chinese, Indian and Russian too, because hundreds of millions, if not even milliards, of people in the whole world could understand me then.

WHO COULD understand YOUR Language? Just a small heap of around million of people limited on the quite destroyed piece of land... with no business, medicine, education and other nice 21st century things involved.

Honestly speaking, being a democratic globalist by my nature, I would be interested to read more objective opinions on this forum... however, this thread starts clearly to show an impression on the Latvian language, not Riga girls at all!

Like always in Latvia, shit!.. Shit is what is going out Directly From My Rectum!! Whatever you may speak on with Latvians - it always ends with Latvian language! That's why I am a little bit bored by this country in 5+ years... I'm the lucky one - my girlfriend is mixed and has a lot of truly international relatives who speak many languages incl. English so I could merely understand them without f*cking up my brains by yet another violence.

The Latvian story is very much that of the European periphery in general: for a while, there were huge inflows of capital and corresponding trade deficits, which then suddenly stopped.

krugman. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2012/06/10/latvian-competitiveness/

Hello again, same guest speaking as before - that is the foreigner who lives in Latvia, not the possible bot giving links without much in the way of input.

Haha, sorry, I did go back to language, not because I am Latvian, or very used to the debate, but just because of my own personal bias - I found this site when I was looking for language learning material! I got distracted from my good intentions and ended up reading half the threads on here. Some interesting things...

On that subject (which is off topic in an off topic thread - I apologise - Riga girls are great.) Most of the people posting on here (generally only once or twice to be fair) seem to have a very unusual idea of what a 'Latvian Girl' is. Some are downright demeaning - 'I have car, I have ok job, I sort of understand English, are there any beautiful stylish, intelligent women out there who will sleep with me while I am in Riga?' I've met many people here, and many wonderful women in particular (and fallen in love with one) but I've not met any who would jump into bed with a random foreigner for the sake of a cash card. Generally (and apologies for generalisations) Latvian people are some of the shyest and most reticent I have seen anywhere in the world. Sometimes if you don't know them they can seem downright cold, I don't know how this reputation got out.

....and back to being only slightly off topic, or at least on topic in an off topic thread...As I was saying, I was looking for language material, so that may have influenced me. And...I influenced me...back when I participated in the real world, I worked as an interpreter, so languages were a big part of my life, and they continue to be. Which brings me onto my 'being limited.'

I am coming up to the best part of thirty years old, which makes me old for a Congolese person, but quite young for a European - but I have spent more than ten years away from home volunteering and working in an unusual mix of countries. I speak Arabic, English and Spanish and can do quite a good job of pretending in Latvian, French, Farsi, Pashtu and Italian. Alas..not Russian, my vis milaka is from time to time giving me little krievski lessons, but so far I can read, write, and say enough words to make the kind of random sentence a monkey would type. Living in Latvia, it is simply not a priority for me, because I live some distance away from Russia, and my immediate circle are all first language Latvian speakers...

You say simply that Latvia has always had oppressors, which is pretty much true, it has the misfortune to be small and weak and geographically pretty unhappily placed. But...the language that Latvian people identify with is the unique little soup that has arisen from that broth of overseers. Writing it off because the Germans first started codifying it and the Russians developed it is like writing English off because first the Romans wiped out half of the traditional grunts and replaced them with their own and then the French did the rest. Americans still claim English as their own despite the oppression of America by the Brits, and black Americans still claim it as their own despite their oppression by the other Americans. What a nation has come through time and strife and struggle with as what they identify as their own, is that by definition.

English is wonderful because it is a true magpie of the language world. It has words from everywhere and never stops evolving. The only truly unique, individual language I know is Arabic, because of the Quran, their language is pretty well preserved as what it was. Which is both a bad and a good thing, it is pure, it is beautiful (and has a far bigger vocabulary than English) but it is in trouble with updating, it refuses to evolve in a world that goes really bloody fast nowadays.

Even Russian, with its wonderful vocab, and infinite shades of poetic meaning has its contributers who aren't Russian....Without Greek pastors, there would be no Russian language as you know it...


As for the nobody relying on themselves thing....that is what we are trying to do. In a while, I will have made a house from sticks, without electricity, without any connection to that world outside, and we will live a nice little life in the garden and woods. I am unusual in that respect. And I admit, once you have children, and have to play with the bigger boys of society, Latvia probably isn't the best place to be - hence so many of the young and good leaving (and the less young and less good - I've worked on factory floors in the UK with 55 year old drunks and women who don't speak a word of English but need to at least appear to be looking for work to get their benefits - but that is another story.)

I don't base my opinions on any political or economic fact, I have nothing more than personal, falible and debatable experience. I work like the tourist slogan...'Latvia...nice place.' I speak Spanish and have lived in Spain and never been let inside...I speak Arabic and have lived everywhere from Iraq to Morocco and have never been let inside...I speak English and have lived in South Africa and never been let inside. When I came here with no Latvian, no friends and nothing to my name, Latvians invited me in. Lativa, nice place, nice people, people singing...etc...the comedy is true (for me at least.) If you can say 'paldies' to a Latvian, they generally treat you better than a Francophone will treat you for having an extended discussion on Epicurean philosophy. So yes, I don't get much into politics...but, it's a nice place.

Dzons (not my real name, but it seems to be the closest most Latvian people get to it;)

PS = thought I may as well toss something in there that is vaguely on topic.

When I was first here, I knew nothing of the sordid shenanigans that websites like RigaRomance provide, and I went into Riga with the woman who would become my other half. It was a nice day, if you ignored the fact that the only other English speaking people I heard were riding a 'beer bike' and screaming obscenities at locals.' One thing that surprised me was some old tante who was selling ice cream, but when I bought two, she treated me like I had crawled from a gutter and masturbated on her shoe.

I asked my other half to be, and she said simply, 'she thinks I'm a malka, and you're a rich idiot, and I don't know which is worse to be.'

We don't go to Riga much...but it's a nice place too.

Thanks for your comments again. To recognize a "Guest" from "Guest", we have a possibility on this board when any guest could just enter a Nickname without password, and if such nickname is still not taken by another user, your message will be posted from that nickname. Actually this what is written beneath each of the message form, so next time you could recognize yourself as "Džons" if it would be needed; in Latvian, there are letters in some way inheriting Spanish cedillas and Chezh carons, if you are up to languages, you need to know it


This is true, most of minor languages on this Earth migrated from the Christianity tales, and while Russian is is a migration from the Ancient Greek (Orthodox Church), Lettish has been migrated from the Latin German (Catholic Church), thus both languages belong to a similar Balto-Slavic group of Indo-European family, which says a lot.

But the important question is when they these languages started to develop.

The history of Russian starts from the 9th Century, when mutual letters were first transcribed as the Alphabet. The history of Lettish actually starts only in 18th Century, when there were published the first vocabularies, translating from Latvian to German, so Latvians actually never had their own Alphabet, which was being gradually developed and so it doesn't develop the language as that - until it was artifically re-created in the 19th/20th Century times by the so called "Latvian National Awakening" intellectuals.

Of course, I know each Latvian is proud to mention even 16th Century books which "are about Lettish", but they are not composed in Latvian, they do not even transcribe Latvian - they just mention that on this territory, there is kind of a new dialect. The current version of Latvian language is not more than 100 years old. Now you could compare: both languages are in the same group of historical dimension, but Russian has the history of 12 centuries development, Lettish - only about 100 years.

Then what language, do you think, has a majority over this territory? This question would answer, why Russian language speakers are not up to study the young and quite native language so far.


May be, I don't know this subject well, so I won't argue. I'm just pretty sure Lettish has less words than Arabic then


I would say, you are quite usual. Have you ever heard about the downshifting? Whatever you have in mind, is determined time ago. Why to build "the house of sticks" then, not of stones? You don't have to repeat the Three Little Pigs fable

Anyway, I understood your tension. You know, our world is so opened nowadays. So it must be a miracle when you find your own place under such a big formation like Earth. I think, your place is just amongst pagan people who speak to trees and water, like their ancestors were doing for hundreds of years before.

But my personal place is amongst people who investigate, who learn and go forward using what had been already achieved, and building a new knowledge on that. I'm truly happy than you have found your place/love in Latvia, and since you appear truly not the regular foreigner coming here, the Latvians who surround you like this in you. Obviously, not all Latvians, may be less of them, like people who don't want to be pagans and who want to grow.

What you see in your small world, is actually a little needle of the big spoon; but if you are happy with this, you are welcome!

That's definite Plomb sorry, but I was supressed to cut off the f* word from most of your emotional parts - even without it, they are quite nice to understand and get, and so, as an admin, you must look ethic.

Let's not be too emotional on this question of languages, nationality and so on. I understand almost all people's brains are washed up by these theories. But they are just theories, nothing more than this.

Even taking a look at the latest replies, meaning someone will learn Latvian with pleasure, but will deny to learn Russian because it's an "oppressors language", I would say, that's the same dirty political technology used in Latvia for the recent 20 years. Instead of claiming "let's learn ALL the major languages of our land and neighbors, let's learn Latvian, Latgalian, Russian, German, English", the government just opposes anyone to learn Latvian only.

Latvian is limited just to a million of people; thus not all of those people know this language perfectly, could write and speak without mistakes. May be only 10-15% of them. So we limit this language just to a few thousands of people.

How could just thousands of people let their will to another MILLION?

Learning just Latvian, means, you will live in the stone age. You can't study others achievements in science, arts, literature.

People knowing more than just Latvian, soon will appear here like Ancient Druids. So that's a giant step back to the stone age. No wonder other people want to be educated, and they are telling against such "approach".

I am not for not learning Latvian, I am for studying all other languages which would help to survive here.

Latvia would be prosperous only if Latvia realize its 'real indepence'---neither been slaved by Russia nor been slaved by west europe.