Mitmekeelsus hernhuutlaste käsikirjades

Until the mid-18th century, written Latvian and Estonian served as ‘means of colonization and Christianization’ (Lukas 2020: 42), since they were written by educated Germans who had immigrated to the country. The first steps towards a distinctly Latvian writing system in the Latvian-speaking region of historic Livonia came through the influence of the Moravian Church. The Moravian Brethren, active worldwide, promoted egalitarian practices based on a hierarchical equality between languages, which set in motion a process of decolonization. Through the parallel use of Latvian and German, the inclusive forms of address (‘brother’ and ‘sister’), the recognition of feminine forms, and the explicit marking of linguistic and ethnic affiliation in official Herrnhut historiography, an ‘imagined decolonized space’ was created within the Moravian community in Livonia. This in turn contributed to the Latvians’ search for a shared cultural identity. The text types introduced by the Moravians were locally adapted and served as a foundation for new forms of creativity, which, among other effects, enabled the development of Latvian as a monolingual national language. The prevailing paradigm of external description gradually gave way to the self-description of Latvian culture.