Edit: just to be clear, many Chinese dialects have a lower lexical similarity than European languages. The standardization of Mandarin in education has had impacts on these dialects as well.

[–] I_CAST_BEAM_OF_BATS_I_CAST_BOLT_OF_BATS@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

Now let's compare changes in poverty, population, and growth statistics for Russians in Latvia, versus Uyghurs in China. Oh, oh no...

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

What do you mean by "use"? Here the whole debable was about pre-school from what I understand. Russian is still studied as a language in primary school, let alone spoken home etc.

Also Latvian and Russian are quite different languages, although not so different as for example Estonian and Russian (where BTW similar measures in educations have been passed).

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

If that happened in China or Russia, headlines would be: "cultural genocide"

[–] Mobilityfuture@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Correct.

In Latvia the reason they are even having this discussion is because when USSR were occupiers they suppressed the local language (Latvian) with a brutal police regime, concentration camps, and the forced migration of ethnic Russians.

So yes - exactly. Moscovite Russia/ USSR started a cultural genocide in Latvia. This is just the fallout

[–] PanArab@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

100%