- By the Imperial census of 1897. In bold are languages spoken by more people than the state language.
| Language | Number | percentage (%) | males | females |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latvian | 507 511 | 75.29 | 240 672 | 266 839 |
| German | 51 017 | 7.56 | 23 372 | 27 645 |
| Yiddish | 37 689 | 5.59 | 18 137 | 19 552 |
| Russian | 25 630 | 3.8 | 16 319 | 9 311 |
| Polish | 19 688 | 2.92 | 9 985 | 9 703 |
| Lithuanian | 16 531 | 2.45 | 8 833 | 7 698 |
| Belarusian | 12 283 | 1.82 | 6 356 | 5 927 |
| Romani | 1 202 | 0.17 | 581 | 621 |
| Persons that didn't name their native language |
5 | >0.01 | 4 | 1 |
| Other | 2 478 | 0.36 | 1 993 | 485 |
| Total | 674 034 | 100 | 326 252 | 347 782 |
Read more about this topic: Courland Governorate
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The language I have learnt these forty years,
My native English, now I must forgo,
And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringèd viol or a harp.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
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