Bilingualism and the pronunciation of Latvian intonations

For 50 years after World War II, Latvia was incorporated into the former Soviet Union. Although in theory the use of regional languages was not discouraged, in practice knowledge of Russian was obligatory. Since restoration of the country’s independence in 1991, Latvian has again become the official language, and knowledge of Russian is widespread but optional. These political events have created a natural experiment in the possible effects of almost universal bilingualism on a language. In this study, we examine the phonetic characteristics of the Latvian syllable intonations across generations. Native speakers of Latvian, ranging from retirement age to teens, were recorded reading a word list, sentences, and a short narrative. We find that younger speakers who used Latvian only about half of the time showed fading in their pronunciation of the intonations.