The Russian Diaspora in Latvia and Estonia: Predicting Language Outcomes

The article focuses on the language situation in the Russian diaspora in Latvia and Estonia and analyses factors that are critical in determining language outcomes for a language community within one country which speaks a majority language of another, a ‘trans-frontier minority’ in Williams’ (1991) terminology. It examines the possibility of three outcomes: language maintenance, bilingualism and language shift in a short-term and a long-term perspective. Language laws and other language-planning efforts as well as new cultural and socioeconomic realities are interpreted asfactors that may or may not alter the current status quo in a community with a high resistance to language shift.