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by sam_lowry_ 2115 days ago
Having being in Latvia a few times and knowing the historical context... I distrust Latvian language statistics.

Still, even those statistics admit that Riga is mostly Russian-speaking [1]. This is where the IT crowd would land, anyway.

[1] https://www.csb.gov.lv/en/statistics/statistics-by-theme/pop...

1 comments

As the resident of Riga have to add that it depends on age. Young native Latvian people tend to avoid learning russian (but actually they have to while living in Riga). Also there is a constant goverment level pressure to ignore russian as a vital part of latvian life so you will always feel that you are not welcome in many places like the oficial institutions. But actually you could live for years there not speaking any latvian word :) Also it is worth to mention that english is starting to be more and more important (even more important than latvian) in daily life for IT people as foreign people in teams are much more usual now even than 5 years ago.