Latvian (latviesu valoda), sometimes referred to as Lettish, is the official state language of the Republic of Latvia. There are about 1.5 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 200,000 abroad.

Latvian belongs to the Eastern Baltic sub-group of the Baltic language group in the Indo-European language family. Of the Baltic languages, only Latvian and its closest relative Lithuanian remain. However, while related, the Latvian and Lithuanian vocabularies vary greatly from each other and are not mutually intelligible.

The Latvian language belongs to Baltic branch of Indo-European language family. The Baltic languages are divided into Easter Baltic and Western Baltic languages. There are only two alive Baltic languages in nowadays - the Latvian and the Lithuanian language, both of them belong to Easter Baltic languages. There are 3 dialects in the Latvian language - the Central dialect, Tamian and the High Latvian dialect and more than 500 separate languages or dialects (512). These separate dialects are influenced by standardization, social and culture historical factors and are subordinated to the process of improvement and accommodation to literary standard language. The literary standard language has been developed on the basis of the Central dialect, Zemgalian language (dialect).

The Latvian language has its written form for about 400 years. There have been two orthography traditions since the World War II: - orthography used by Latvians in Latvia; - orthography used by Latvians abroad. Besides, Latgalian orthography tradition exists in the Eastern part of Latvia.