Moscow to press Latvia to give Russian language official status

[Harold Schiffman]

Forwarded from edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu


RIA Novisti



Moscow to press Latvia to give Russian language official status



Moscow will keep up the pressure on Latvia to give the Russian language
official status in the Baltic country, a Foreign Ministry official said on
Tuesday. "We believe that we are justified in pushing to have the status of
the Russian language in Latvia raised to the level of a state language,"
said Alexander Chepurin, the head of the ministry's department on relations
with the Russian diaspora. The diplomat said Latvia, where native Russian
speakers account for at least 30% of the population, is the only ex-Soviet
state to treat Russian as a foreign language. Other states, while
maintaining only one state language, have given Russian varying degrees of
recognition.



Full story:

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20071106/86889684.html


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Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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