Latgalistikys kongresu materiali, III. 2011. - Latvijas Universitāte

Using the data of this binary calculation for all the 74 areas, we can
draw a map in which the thickness of the lines dividing the areas is proportional
to the value of the distance, i.e. the thicker the line, the bigger the
gap between linguistic situations which are separated by that line. As a
consequence, a traveller crossing two different areas, not divided by thick
black lines on the map, would probably not realise that she/he is moving
from one linguistic situation to another. On the other hand, the traveller
could more easily notice the difference, when moving from one place to
another which are divided by thicker lines. For instance, it would be easy
for an inhabitant of Demene (area 84) to consider the linguistic situation of
Kalkūne (85) as very similar to his/her own (there is no line between the
areas), or for an inhabitant of Liepna (132) to consider the linguistic composition
of Viļaka (13) (separated by a thin grey line) as familiar. There
are in fact regions in which the sociolinguistic landscape is more or less
uniform, as in the region south of Lake Rāzna (32, 34, 67, 66, 63, 62). It
should be noted that this does not mean that these situations are “not varied”
or “not multilingual”; it only means that they are almost equal in their
complexity. Instead, a traveller going from Kalkūne (85) to Ilūkste (90)
would cross a very thick imaginary line and would arguably be very puzzled,
since the community norms of linguistic communication are quite
different and the sociolinguistic gap is quite deep (see map 1).
If we now consider the data of the (entire) table, the areas can hierarchically
be classified: see figure 3 for a dendrogramme which represents a
possible hierarchical systematisation of the sociolinguistic situation of
Latgale.
These results can in turn be drawn on a map (map 2) based on the
dendrogramme at level 7,5, i.e. where the double dashed vertical line
crosses the branches of the tree.
Three main areas can be identified on the map. The area with diagonal
shading corresponds to the group 1 in the table, marking the predominance
of Latvian and Latgalian as languages of interaction. In particular,
1.1.1 in the dendogramme shows the areas in which Latvian is by far the
main tool of communication for the inhabitants. In areas in the group 1.2.1.
Russian is frequent — alongside Latvian — and appears in the sociolinguistic
repertory mainly as Lh or L2. Whereas group 2 represents common
Latgalian and Latgalian predominance, 1.2.2 shows Latvian areas with
shrinking presence of Latgalian. In turn, situations labelled as group 3 see
Russian (in some areas in the south even with Belarusian as Ll) as the main
80