Linguist Ernštreits: Latvian Is in a Stable Position, but Action Is Needed on Artificial Intelligence
Valts Ernštreits, director of the Livonian Institute at the University of Latvia, says in an interview that the Latvian language's standing is strong, pointing to its status as the state language. He calls for decisions at state level on supplying quality Latvian content for AI training.
The Latvian language ranks among the top 200 of roughly 7,000 world languages by number of speakers and the opportunities it offers, and its position is very good. This is according to Valts Ernštreits, director of the Livonian Institute at the University of Latvia, a linguist and poet, speaking in an interview with the LV portāls website. He discusses the challenges facing the language in an era of globalisation and artificial intelligence, and what the Livonian language's experience can teach about keeping a language alive.
Foundations of stability and challenges
Ernštreits sees state-language status as a key element of a language's sustainability. Latvian is used in all spheres of life, including public administration. He regards this as a strong shield against assimilation and argues that Latvian cannot be assimilated without undermining the state language's status or Latvia itself. For that reason, he says, the influence of English is currently not a cause for concern.
The challenges are tied to social change. Since Latvia joined the EU and the Schengen area, there have in effect been two Latvias, one within the borders and one outside them, and the community abroad will most likely keep growing. Technology and Latvian-language content online and on television help maintain the connection to the language. Even so, voice-control technology in Latvian is not yet well developed, because the number of speakers and the amount of data are limited, and AI models are dominated by the context of large languages. Another challenge is the disappearance of local dialects and subdialects, which calls for a more inclusive language policy, research and documentation. He cites Estonia's regional dictionaries and grammars as a good example.
Artificial intelligence and copyright
Ernštreits stresses that decisions must be made at state level on how to supply AI training with quality Latvian-language content. Iceland opened all available digital texts for this purpose, while in Estonia a similar attempt triggered sharp debate between the media and AI developers over copyright. He notes that such discussions are now emerging in Latvia too, and important decisions will have to be taken in the near future.
Language and security
The linguist believes that since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Latvia has consistently pursued a policy of making Latvian the common language of communication, and that real integration began in 2022. In his view, the most important thing for preserving a language is that it is used and that a language environment is maintained, as the Livonian experience also shows.
