German Influence on the Christian Discourse of Early Written Latvian

The focus of this essay is the influence of German on early written Latvian, in particular on Christian discourse. The background for the themes dealt with is formed by loan-based cultural phenomena (the Christian religion and the Lutheran Reformation) and the loan-based texts (above all biblical texts) relating to the phenomena and their translation. The study examines the vocabulary and idioms of Christian discourse in the early 16th and 17th centuries, and also the morphological and syntactic structures, in terms of their origin. Early written Latvian was, in practice, a language translated from German, which was clearly reflected in the difference between the written and the spoken language. The influence of German on the written language was even more pronounced because the writers either spoke German as their mother tongue or they had a very good command of German. The influence of German and the resulting obscurity of the texts remained characteristic features of the language of Christianity until in the 19th century.