The Latvian Connection to Ancient Languages and Cultures

Latvian is the only Indo-European language having no aspirates - something which the Nostraticists say marked Proto-Indo-European.

Leonija Wuss-Mundeciema writes:
"The Latvian language [together with Lithuanian and Ancient Prussian], belongs to the Baltic languages which occupy a special position in Indo-European... since they retain archaic forms close to Sanskrit ...."

"The belts and cloth bands on traditional Latvian dress contain complicated woven patterns [called RAKSTI in Latvian = writings], which are handed down from generation to generation...."

LexiLine English translations above were made from the German text of Leonija Wuss-Mundeciema in "Lettisches Praeludium" as found in the book, Lettland, by Paul Mahrt & L. Wuss-Mundeciema, Adam Kraft Verlag, Wuerzburg, 1992, p. 121.
ISBN 3-8083-2015-x

Similarities of the Baltic languages to Hebrew, ancient Greek, and Sanskrit were noted long ago by Franz Bopp, the founder of comparative linguistics, in the work Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German and Slavonic Languages by Franz Bopp et al, H.H. Wilson editor, E. B. Eastwick (translator).

August von Schloezer (the linguist who coined the term "Semitic" 200 years ago) also saw similar connections to Latvian.

The Latvian evidence supports Alan Bomhard, citing Kurylowicz, Greenberg and Pulleyblank and alleging an original vocal schwa > *e for proto-Indo-European. Significantly, Baltic forms are found in Hittite, a 4000-year old Anatolian language. Latvian demonstrative prounouns are nearly identical to Akkadian. Even ancient Sumerian language is very similar to Latvian in some respects. Moreover,the same principle of Nostratic verb morphology is found both in Pharaonic Egyptian and Latvian.

Bomhard provides the athematic Nostratic endings found below, which, as Bomhard writes - and as Franz Bopp suggested 200 years ago (!) - "can be nothing else but agglutinated personal pronouns".
A. Kaulins has added the Pharaonic and Latvian comparisons.

But WHO out there knows Latvian? Very few people.
In the pages of LexiLine, we resurrect important aspects of this language for linguistic and laymen's examination.
The Baltic languages represent many aspects of the still recoverable agglutinative stage of language development prior to inflection and later loss of inflection, as in English.