Letto-Ruhnese

Letto-Ruhnese
Native to	Ruhn-i-Leht, Northern Courland
Native speakers	276 million (2015 est.)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Baltic East Baltic East Baltic Finnic
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Ruhn-i-Leht
Regulated by	The Ruhn-i-Lehtese Speech Committee

Letto-Ruhnese (Leto-Ljuonieshu), also known as Ruhnese Latvian or Finnic Latvian, is the official language of The Ruhn-i-Lehtese States. There are about 276 million native speakers of the language in Ruhn-i-Leht (78% of the population), with 4 million speakers abroad.

Letto-Ruhnese is very closely related to Latvian. They are practically mutually intelligible.

Classification

The classification of Letto-Ruhnese is disputed, and multiple opinions have been expressed.

Indo-European

Officially, Letto-Ruhnese belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. This means, that this is the third Baltic language, that isn't extinct, with the other two being Latvian and Lithuanian. Here it is in the language tree.

Uralic

Some believe that Letto-Ruhnese belongs to the Baltic Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. This means, that the language is put closer to languages like Estonian and Finnish, but this opinion is very unpopular due to the fact, that Letto-Ruhnese and Latvian are mutually intelligible languages. Here it is in the language tree.

Eurasiatic

Many people put Letto-Ruhnese to simply be a Eurasiatic language. Eurasiatic combines Uralic and Indo-European, as well as Macro-Altaic languages. Whilst many people do think that this is a logical opinion, the language is still too close to Latvian, which makes many people frustrated that the language would be so far away from Latvian in the language tree. Here it is in the language tree.

Dialect

Though, notably, many believe Letto-Ruhnese isn't even a language, as many consider it a dialect of the Latvian language. Mutual intelligibility is often named to be the reason. This theory also explains why Letto-Ruhnese is often called Ruhnese Latvian / Finnic Latvian. Though, the fact, that Letto-Ruhnese itself has dialects, pushes many people away from agreeing to this opinion.

History

Letto-Ruhnese as a language developed in the 20th century by the Latvians who moved to Ruhnu. As the Latvians did not know Estonian, they thought how to simplify the language, so that it would be easier for the Estonians to understand the Latvians, and to make it easier for Estonians to learn Latvian. This thought developed the writing system that Letto-Ruhnese uses these days. Notably, at that time, schools in Ruhnu were not that developed, and notably, many of the newborn kids were not able to even spell some letters. This caused the removal of the letter 'R' from the alphabet. That remained to be the only change made to speech.

In 1977, Sandis Kristiāns Pavlovs created the official Letto-Ruhnese language, and was the first president of the Ruhnese (today - Ruhn-i-Lehtese) Speech Comittee, made to protect the Letto-Ruhnese language.

In 1986, Letto-Ruhnese became an official language of the Republic of Ruhnu.

Grammar

Letto-Ruhnese is an inflecting language with many analytical forms. Primary word stress, with a few exceptions, is on the first syllable. There are no articles in Latvian, however definiteness is expressed by inflection of adjectives. Basic word order in Letto-Ruhnese is subject–verb–object; however, word order is relatively free.

Nouns

There are two grammatical genders in Letto-Ruhnese (masculine and feminine) and two numbers, singular and plural. Nouns and adjectives decline into seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. There are six declensions.

Verbs

There are three conjugation classes in Letto-Ruhnese. Verbs are conjugated for person, tense, mood and voice.

Ortography

Letto-Ruhnese is based upon the Latvian and English alphabets. This alphabet only consists of letters, that are in both - Latvian and English alphabets, excluding the letter 'R'. The Letto-Ruhnese standard alphabet consists of 21 letters:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P S T U V Z

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p s t u v z

Writing

Any word can be created by starting with the Latvian word for what you want to translate and then completing just 4 steps:

Letters with multiple pronounciations

Some letters have multiple pronounciations in Latvian: these pronounciations result in unique translations when tranfering a word to Letto-Ruhnese.

Modified letters

Excluding the letter "ē", there are ten other modified letters, which have to be switched:

• ā -> aa;
• ī -> ii;
• ū -> uu;
• ģ -> gj;
• ķ -> kj;
• ļ -> lj;
• ņ -> nj;
• č -> ch;
• ž -> zh;
• š -> sh (if 'š' is the last letter of a word, 'shs' is written instead of 'sh').

The letter 'r'

The letter r also has to be translated for historical reasons, and so, it transfers like this:

• if r is surrounded by consonants, it is replaced with 'ji' (ex. stiprs -> stipjis);
• if r isn't surrounded by consonants, it is replaced with 'lj' (ex. krusa -> kljusa).

Fake sounds

If, when a word is translated, two letters have merged into a sound, which was not created on purpose, that sound is a "fake sound". It makes the Latvian word and the Letto-Ruhnese word sound differently. An apostrophe is needed to seperate these letters and remove such a fake sound. An example of that is the word "ikrs", which, when translated, turns into "ikjis". The problem is that the two letters "kj" end up merging into one sound (the Latvian "ķ"), which makes the pronounciations sound differently. Because of that, an apostrophe is inserted between the two letters. Now, "ikrs" translates to "ik'jis".