Latvian language
The history of the Latvian language (cf. below) has placed it in a peculiar position for a language of its size whereby it is spoken by a large number of non-native speakers as compared to native speakers. The immigrant and minority population in Latvia is 700,000 people: Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and others. The majority of immigrants came to Latvia between 1940–1991; supplementing pre-existing ethnic minority communities (Latvian Germans, Latvian Jews). In a recent survey, 60% of Latvia's ethnic minorities described their knowledge of Latvian as fluent. Fluency in Latvian is prevalent among the younger generations of the minorities.
Russian language in Latvia
In 2017 a total of 7% or 5,332 students studied in Russian in Latvia's state and private higher education institutions (around one third in private colleges and less than 1 percent in state higher institutions), the most being at the Transport and Telecommunication Institute, where the share of the students with Russian as the language of tuition reached 86% or 2,358. Other private higher education institutions with notable percentage of people studying in Russian included Information Systems Management Institute with 53% students, Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration with 34% students, Riga Aeronautical Institute with 18% students, Baltic International Academy with 17% students, and University of Economics and Culture with 6% of all its students studying in Russian.