Business in Latvia: Languages practiced

Language is important in many aspects, thus in business communication and workflow language matters as well. Especially if you are international company then you have to make sure inner departments do understand each other and local people.

Language via conquest

Latvia is a multi-cultural country with long history of co-operation and/or being occupied by foreign nation forces. Therefore I will show and explain to you which languages Latvia and Latvians will be familiar to use in business and daily communication. Bear in mind that there has been active occupation in some point of time by Sweden, Germany, Lithuania (Poland-Lithuania) and Russia among some shorter period occupations. Recent USSR occupation has left Russian language as a legacy to Latvian nation.

Languages via Curriculum

In Latvian schools second and third language is being taught. Second is English language, third is to be chosen Russian or German. Approaching university youth is presented with various choices such as German, French, Swedish, Spanish etc. even Hebrew, Chinese and Arabic are chosen in rare cases.

Countrywide usage of language

Because of USSR occupation Russian language is mother tongue of 28% citizens of Latvia and is understood by 50%-60% of citizens making it widely used second language, however curriculum program of teaching English as second language from early 90's has made it widely understood, an estimate of 30% of public speaks/understands English language. Furthermore German, French and Spanish are popular hobbyist languages to learn.

So it is easy to say English and Russian will be understood and used enough to maintain daily workflow. Any other language is per CV request and is based around 2%-5%(speculative) of population.