page_title: Livonian language
section_title: Speakers of Livonian in the twenty-first century
hierarchical_section_title: Livonian language / History / Speakers of Livonian in the twenty-first century
caption_attribution_description: English: Julgi Stalte performing in Käsmu, Estonia in August 2009. Eesti: Julgi Stalte esinemas Käsmus, 2009 Viru Folgil
context_page_description: Livonian is a Finnic language. Its last native speaker died in 2013, but it has been revived with about 40 speakers and 210 having knowledge of the language. The native land of the Livonian people is the Livonian Coast of the Gulf of Livonia, located in the north of the Kurzeme peninsula in Latvia. Possibly unique among the Uralic languages, Livonian has been described as a pitch-accent language.
  Some ethnic Livonians are learning or have learned Livonian in an attempt to revive it, but because ethnic Livonians are a small minority, opportunities to use Livonian are limited. The Estonian newspaper Eesti Päevaleht erroneously announced that Viktors Bertholds, who died on 28 February 2009, was the last native speaker who started the Latvian-language school as a monolingual. Some other Livonians had argued, however, that there were some native speakers left, including Viktors Bertholds' cousin, Grizelda Kristiņa. Kristiņa died in 2013. An article published by the Foundation for Endangered Languages in 2007 stated that there were only 182 registered Livonians and a mere six native speakers.
context_section_description: Viktors Bertholds (July 10, 1921 – February 28, 2009), one of the last Livonian speakers of the generation who learnt Livonian as first language in a Livonian-speaking family and community, died on February 28, 2009. Though it was reported that he was the last native speaker of the language, Livonians themselves claimed that there are more native speakers still alive, albeit very few.
  As reported in the Estonian newspaper Eesti Päevaleht, Viktors Bertholds was born in 1921 and probably belonged to the last generation of children who started their (Latvian-medium) primary school as Livonian monolinguals; only a few years later it was noted that Livonian parents had begun to speak Latvian with their children. During World War II, Bertholds, unlike most Livonian men, managed to avoid being mobilized in the armies of either occupation force by hiding in the woods. After the war, Bertholds worked in various professions and shared his knowledge of Livonian language with many field linguists; in the 1990s, he also taught Livonian in children's summer camps.
  Bertholds' Livonian-speaking brother and wife died in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, many other prominent "last Livonians" also died, such as Poulin Klavin (1918–2001), keeper of many Livonian traditions and the last Livonian to reside permanently on the Courland coast, and Edgar Vaalgamaa (1912–2003), clergyman in Finland, translator of the New Testament and author of a book on the history and culture of the Livonians.
  Supposedly the last native speaker of Livonian was Grizelda Kristiņa, née Bertholde (1910–2013, a cousin of Viktors Bertholds), who lived in Canada from 1949. According to Valts Ernštreits, she spoke Livonian as well "as if she had stepped out of her home farm in a Livonian coastal village just yesterday".  and qualified as the last living native speaker of the Livonian language of her generation. She died on June 2, 2013.
  The survival of the Livonian language now depends on young Livonians who learned Livonian in their childhood from grandparents or great-grandparents of the pre-war generations. There are not many of them, though there are a few hundred ethnic Livonians in Latvia now who are interested in their Livonian roots. Some young Livonians not only sing folk-songs in Livonian but even strive to use Livonian actively in everyday communication. One such younger generation Livonian speaker is Julgī Stalte, who performs with the Livonian-Estonian world music group Tuļļi Lum.
caption: Julgī Stalte performing with the Livonian-Estonian world music group Tuļļi Lum in 2009
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