Latvians Learn Brazilian Portuguese

Flash! Latvia ties Turkey in second match and moves on to next year's playoffs for the European Cup! (We're talking soccer here. Not American-style football. And that's a good thing -- since both Yale and Ohio State lost on November 22. But watch out for next year! [My university has no U.S.-style football team. So I must root for alien teams.])

Actually: far more exciting (as far as Latvia goes): The quadrennial folk song festival in Riga. Did you know that Lithuania has the world's largest collection of folks songs, and Latvia, the second largest? (Second-largest is good enough for me.)

Latvian was purely a spoken language -- a peasant's spoken language -- until the 19th century. Latvian and Lithuanian are loosely -- but only loosely -- related to the Finno-Ungric (& Estonian) language group.

I will do some fact-checking. If I have made any errors, this page will change -- in a day or two.