Latvian
latviešu valoda
Spoken in	Latvia
Region	Baltic
Native speakers	1.5 million  (no date)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Baltic Eastern Baltic Latvian
Writing system	Latvian alphabet (Latin)
Official status
Official language in	Latvia  European Union
Regulated by	Latvian State Language Center
Language codes
ISO 639-1	lv
ISO 639-2	lav
ISO 639-3	lvs
Linguasphere	54-AAB-a
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Latvian (latviešu valoda) is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language. Because of the language policy in Latvia about 1.9 million or 79% of Latvian population speak Latvian.^[2] The use of the Latvian language in various areas of social life in Latvia is increasing.^[3]

Latvian is a Baltic language and is most closely related to Lithuanian, although the two are not mutually intelligible.

Latvian first appeared in Western print in the mid-16th century with the reproduction of the Lord's Prayer in Latvian in Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia Universalis, in Latin script.

Classification[link]

Latvian belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is one of two living Baltic languages with an official status (the other being Lithuanian). The Latvian and Lithuanian languages have retained many features of the nominal morphology of the proto-language, though in matters of phonology and verbal morphology they show many innovations, with Latvian being considerably more innovative than Lithuanian. The differences between Latvian and Lithuanian are very roughly comparable to those between English and German.

Dialects[link]

There are three dialects in Latvian: the Livonian dialect, Latgalian and the Middle dialect. The Livonian dialect is divided into the Vidzeme variety and the Courland variety (also called tāmnieku or ventiņu). The Middle dialect, the basis of standard Latvian, is divided into the Vidzeme variety, the Curonian variety and the Semigallian variety. Latvian dialects should not be confused with the Livonian, Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian languages.

Livonian dialect[link]

Map showing geographical distribution of the dialects in Latvia. Varieties of the Livonian dialect (Lībiskais dialekts) are in blue, the Middle dialect (Vidus dialekts) in green, the Upper dialect (Augšzemnieku dialekts) in yellow.

The Livonian dialect of Latvian was more affected by the Livonian language substratum than Latvian in other parts of Latvia. There are two intonations in the Livonian dialect. In Courland short vowels in the endings of words are discarded, while long vowels are shortened. In all genders and numbers only one form of the verb is used. Personal names in both genders are derived with endings – els, -ans. In prefixes ie is changed to e. Due to migration and the introduction of a standardised language this dialect has declined. It arose from assimilated Livonians, who started to speak in Latvian and assimilated Livonian grammar into Latvian.

Middle dialect[link]

The Vidzeme variety and the Semigallian variety are closer to each other than to the Curonian variety, which is more archaic than the other two. There are three intonations in the Middle dialect. In the Semigallian variety, ŗ is still used.

Non-native speakers[link]

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 during the Soviet occupation (1940–1991), supplementing pre-existing ethnic minority communities.^{[citation needed]} In a recent survey, 60% of Latvia's ethnic minorities described their knowledge of Latvian as fluent.^[4] Fluency in Latvian is prevalent among the younger generations of the minorities.

The adoption of Latvian by minorities was brought about by its status as the only official language of the country, its prominence in the education system, its sole use in the public sector^{[citation needed]} and by changes in the society after the fall of the Soviet Union that shifted linguistic focus away from Russian. As an example, in 2007 universities and colleges for the first time received applications from prospective students who had a bilingual secondary education in schools for minorities. Fluency in Latvian is expected in a variety of professions and careers.

Grammar[link]

Latvian is an inflecting language with many analytical forms. There are two grammatical genders in Latvian (masculine and feminine) and two numbers, singular and plural. Nouns and adjectives decline into seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. There are six declensions. Verbs are conjugated for person, tense, mood and voice. Primary word stress, with a few exceptions, is on the first syllable. There are no articles in Latvian, however definiteness is expressed by inflection of adjectives. Basic word order in Latvian is subject–verb–object; however, word order is relatively free.

Orthography[link]

Latvian in Latin script was first based upon the German alphabet, while the alphabet of the Latgalian dialect was based on the Polish alphabet. At the beginning of the 20th century, this was replaced by a more phonetically appropriate alphabet.

Standard orthography[link]

Today, the Latvian standard alphabet consists of 33 letters:

The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet (all except Q, W, X and Y). It adds a further eleven letters by modification. The vowel letters A, E, I and U can take a macron to show length, unmodified letters being short. The letters C, S and Z, that in unmodified form are pronounced [ts], [s] and [z] respectively, can be marked with a caron. These marked letters, Č, Š and Ž are pronounced [tʃ], [ʃ] and [ʒ] respectively. The letters Ģ, Ķ, Ļ and Ņ are written with a cedilla or little 'comma' placed below (or above the lowercase g). They are modified (palatalized) versions of G, K, L and N and represent the sounds [ɟ], [c], [ʎ] and [ɲ]. Non-standard varieties of Latvian add extra letters to this standard set.

Latvian spelling has almost perfect correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Every phoneme has its own letter so that a reader need not learn how a word is pronounced, but simply pronounce it. There are only three exceptions to this that could cause mispronunciation. The first is the letter E and its long variation Ē, which are used to write two sounds that represent the short and long versions of either [ɛ] or [æ] respectively. The letter O indicates both the short and long [ɔ], and the diphthong [uɔ]. These three sounds are written as O, Ō and Uo in Latgalian, and some Latvians campaign for the adoption of this system in standard Latvian. However, the majority of Latvian linguists argue that o and ō are found only in loanwords, with the Uo sound being the only native Latvian phoneme. The digraph Uo was discarded in 1914, and the letter Ō has not been used in the official Latvian language since 1946. Likewise, the letters Ŗ and Ch were discarded in 1957, although they are still used in some varieties and by many Latvians living beyond the borders of Latvia. The letter Y is used only in the Latgalian language, where it is used to write a distinct phoneme that does not occur in other Latvian varieties. Latvian orthography allows nine digraphs, which are written Ai, Au, Ei, Ie, Iu, Ui, Oi, Dz and Dž.

Old orthography[link]

Latvian Bible written in old orthography.

The old orthography was based on that of German and did not represent the Latvian language phonemically. At the beginning it was used to write religious texts for German priests to help them in their work with Latvians. The first writings in Latvian were chaotic: there were twelve variations of writing Š. In 1631 the German priest Georgs (Juris) Mancelis tried to systematize the writing. He wrote long vowels according to their position in the word – a short vowel followed by h for a radical vowel, a short vowel in the suffix and vowel with a diacritic mark in the ending indicating two accents. Consonants were written following the example of German with multiple letters. The old orthography was used until the 20th century when it was slowly replaced by the modern orthography.

Latvian on computers[link]

The rarely used Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout

Standard QWERTY keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using a dead key (usually ', occasionally ~). Some keyboard layouts use the modifier key AltGr (most notably the Windows 2000 and XP built-in layout (Latvian QWERTY), it is also default modifier in X11R6, thus a default in most Linux distributions). In the early 1990s, the Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout was developed. Although this layout may be available with language support software, it has not become popular because of a lack of keyboards with this layout.

In 1990s, lack of software support of diacritics caused an unofficial style of orthography, often called translits, to emerge for use in situations when the user is unable to access Latvian diacritic marks (e-mail, newsgroups, web user forums, chat, SMS etc.). It uses the basic Modern Latin alphabet only, and letters that are not used in standard orthography are usually omitted. In this style, diacritics are replaced by digraphs – a doubled letter indicates a long vowel (as in Finnish and Estonian); a following j indicates palatalisation of consonants, i.e., a cedilla; and the postalveolars Š, Č and Ž are written with h replacing the háček, as in English. Sometimes the second letter, the one used instead of a diacritic, is changed to one of two other diacritic letters (e.g. š is written as ss or sj, not sh), and since many people may find it difficult to use these unusual methods, they write without any indication of missing diacritic marks, or they use digraphing only if the diacritic mark in question would make a semantic difference.^[5] Sometimes an apostrophe is used before or after the character that would properly need to be diacriticised. Also, digraph diacritics are often used and sometimes even mixed with diacritical letters of standard orthography. Although today there is software support available, diacritic-less writing is still sometimes used for financial and social reasons. As š and ž are part of the Windows-1252 coding, it is possible to input those two letters using a numerical keypad.

Comparative orthography[link]

For example, the Lord's Prayer in Latvian written in different styles:

Phonology[link]

Consonants[link]

The consonant sounds /f x/ are only found in loanwords. [ŋ] is only an allophone of nasals before velars.

Latvian plosives are not aspirated (unlike in English and other Germanic languages).

Vowels[link]

Latvian has six vowels, with length as distinctive feature:

/ɔ ɔː/, and the diphthongs involving it other than /uɔ/, are confined to loanwords.

Vowel length ratio is about 1/2.5. Vowel length is phonemic and plays an important role in the language. For example koka [ˈkuɔka] means 'made of wood', kokā [ˈkuɔkaː] means 'on the tree'; pile [ˈpilɛ] means 'a drop', and pīle [ˈpiːlɛ] means 'a duck'.

Latvian also has 10 diphthongs, four of which are only found in loanwords (/ai ui ɛi au iɛ uɔ iu (ɔi) ɛu (ɔu)/), although some diphthongs are mostly limited to proper names and interjections. Opening diphthongs are centred leading some sources to represent them as ending with /a/. If the second component of a diphthong is close, it is converted to a consonant when preceding a vowel, thereby /u/ and /i/ become [v] and [j].^[7]

Pitch accent[link]

Standard Latvian and, with a few minor exceptions, all of the Latvian dialects have fixed initial stress. Long vowels and diphthongs have a tone, regardless of their position in the word. This includes the so called "mixed diphthongs", composed of a short vowel followed by a sonorant. There are three types of tones:

level (also drawling, sustained) tone (stieptā intonācija)

high throughout the syllable

e.g., tā "that; she" (pronunciation represented as "tã" in Latvian phonetics)

falling tone (krītošā intonācija)

brief rise followed by a long fall

e.g., tā "of it; his" (pronounced "tà")

broken tone (lauztā intonācija)

rising tone followed by falling tone with interruption in the middle or some creakiness in the voice

e.g., tā "so" (pronounced "tâ")

Beside the three-tone system, there are also Latvian dialects with only two tones: in western parts of Latvia the falling tone merged with the broken tone, while in eastern parts of Latvia the level tone merged with the falling tone. Hence, the Central Latvian traũks, dràugs, raûgs corresponds to Western Latvian traũks, draûgs, raûgs, and to Eastern Latvian tràuks, dràugs, raûgs.^[8] Both the three- and the two-tone systems are accepted in standard Latvian. However, some dialects in Selonia also have the fourth (rising) tone.^[7]

This system is similar to the ones found in Lithuanian, Swedish, Norwegian, Limburgish and Serbo-Croatian. The broken tone is similar to the Danish stød.

History[link]

The Baltic languages are of particular interest to linguists because they retain many archaic features believed to have been present in the early stages of the Proto-Indo-European language.^{[citation needed]}

There is some evidence to suggest the existence of a Balto-Slavic language group after the break-up of Proto-Indo-European, with the Slavic and Baltic languages splitting around the 10th century BC. However, some linguists: Meillet, Klimas, Zinkevičius oppose this view, providing arguments against a Balto-Slavic group, and explaining those similarities by one or several periods of close contacts. There exist a number of Baltic words that are similar to Sanskrit or Latin and which lack counterparts in Slavic languages. Latvian, Albanian, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages are grouped as satem languages. While the possession of many archaic features is undeniable, the exact manner by which the Baltic languages have developed from the Proto-Indo-European language is not clear.

According to some glottochronological speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from Western Baltic (or, perhaps, from the hypothetical proto-Baltic language) between 400 and 600. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800, with a long period of being one language but different dialects. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century, and perhaps as late as the 17th century.

Latvian emerged as a distinct language in the 16th century, having evolved from Latgalian^{[citation needed]} and assimilating Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian on the way. All of these belong to the Baltic language group.

The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a hymn made by Nikolaus Ramm, a German pastor in Riga.

Until the 19th century, the Latvian language was heavily influenced by the German language, because the upper class of local society was formed by Baltic Germans. In the middle of the 19th century the first Latvian National Awakening was started, led by “Young Latvians” who popularized the use of Latvian language. Participants to this movement laid the foundations for standard Latvian and also popularized the latvianization of loan words. However, in the 1880s, when czar Alexander III came into power, Russification started. During this period, some Latvian scholars even suggested adopting Cyrillic for use in Latvian. After the czar's death, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, nationalist movements reemerged.

In 1908, Latvian linguists Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns elaborated the modern Latvian alphabet, which slowly replaced the old orthography used before. Another feature of the language, in common with its sister language Lithuanian, that was developed at that time is that proper names from other countries and languages, no matter how obscure, are altered phonetically to fit the phonological system of Latvian. Even if the original language also uses the Latin alphabet, this process takes place. Moreover, the names are modified in order to ensure that they have noun declension endings, declining like all other nouns. For example, a place such as Lecropt (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village of Tillicoultry becomes Tilikutrija. This is a good example of linguistic purism in this ancient language.

During the years of Soviet occupation (1940–41 and 1945–91), the policy of Russification greatly affected the Latvian language. Throughout this period, many Latvians and Latvia’s other ethnicities faced deportation and persecution. A massive immigration from the Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and others followed, largely as a result of Stalin's plan to integrate Latvia and the other Baltic republics into the Soviet Union by means of Russian colonization. As a result, the proportion of the ethnic Latvian population within the total population was reduced from 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. In Soviet Latvia, most of the immigrants who settled in the country didn't learn Latvian. Today, Latvian is the mother tongue of more than 60% of the country's population.

After the re-establishment of independence in 1991, a new policy of language education was introduced. The primary declared goal was the integration of all inhabitants into the environment of the official state language, while protecting the languages of Latvia's ethnic minorities.

Government-funded bilingual education is available in primary schools for ethnic minorities. These include Russian, Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Estonian and Roma schools. Latvian is taught as a second language in the initial stages too, as is officially declared, in order to encourage proficiency in that language, aiming at avoiding alienation from the Latvian-speaking linguistic majority and for the sake of facilitating academic and professional achievements. Since the mid-1990s, the government may pay a student's tuition in public universities only provided that the instruction is in Latvian. Since 2004, the state mandates Latvian as the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Form 10–12) for at least 60% of class work (previously, a broad system of education in Russian existed).

The Law on State Language was adopted on December 9, 1999. Several regulatory acts associated with this law have been adopted. Observance of the law is monitored by the State Language Centre run by the Ministry of Justice.

To counter the influence of Russian and English, government organizations (namely the Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Science and the State Language Center) try to popularize the use of Latvian terms and linguistic purism. Purism is often observed in the coining of new terms, which are usually disputed by the public^{[citation needed]} – although purists have invented some euphonic words, many neologisms are widely seen as 'alien' and unnecessary, as pre-existing words could be used instead^{[citation needed]}. For example, a heated debate arose when the Terminology Commission suggested that “eira”, with its 'latvianized' ending, would be a better term for euro than the widely used “eiro”. Other new terms are literal translations or new loanwords. For example, Latvian has two words for "telephone" – "tālrunis" and "telefons", the former being a direct translation into Latvian of the latter international term. Still others are older, more euphonic loanwords rather than Latvian words. For example, "computer" can be either "dators" or "kompjūters". Both are loanwords (the native Latvian word for 'computer' is "skaitļotājs"). However, for some time now “dators” has been considered an appropriate translation.

There are several contests held annually to promote correct use of Latvian.^[9][10] Notably, the State Language Center holds contests for language mistakes, named "Gimalajiešu superlācis" after an infamous incorrect translation of Asiatic Black Bear. These mistakes, often quite amusing, are both grammatical and stylistic; sometimes also obvious typos and mistranslations are considered to belong here. Organizers claim that mistakes are largely collected in areas heavily populated by Russian-speakers, as well as from Lithuanian-owned chain stores. Mistranslations are not necessarily grammatical, but also stylistic and vocabulary mistakes, such as literal translations from the English language.

Bibliography[link]

• Bielenstein, Die lettische Sprache (Berlin, 1863–64)
• Bielenstein, Lettische Grammatik (Mitau, 1863)
• Bielenstein, Die Elemente der lettischen Sprache (Mitau, 1866), popular in treatment
• Ulmann and Brasche, Lettisches Wörterbuch (Riga, 1872–80)
• Bielenstein, Tausend lettische Räthsel, übersetzt und erklärt (Mitau, 1881)
• Bezzenberger, Lettische Dialekt-Studien (Göttingen, 1885)
• Bezzenberger, Ueber die Sprache der preussischen Letten;; (Göttingen, 1888)
• Thomsen, Beröringer melem de Finske og de Baltiske Sprog (Copenhagen, 1890)
• Bielenstein, Grenzen des lettischen Volksstammes und der lettischen Sprache (St. Petersburg, 1892)
• Baron and Wissendorff, Latwju dainas (Latvian Folksongs, Mitau, 1894)
• Andreianov, Lettische Volkslieder und Mythen (Halle, 1896 )
• Bielenstein, Ein glückliches Leben (Riga, 1904)
• Brentano, Lehrbuch der lettischen Sprache (Vienna, c. 1907)
• Holst, Lettische Grammatik (Hamburg, 2001)
• Wolter, "Die lettische Literatur," in Die ost-europäische Literaturen (Berlin, 1908)
• Kalning, Kurzer Lettischer Sprachführer (Riga, 1910)

Literary histories in Latvian[link]

• Klaushush, Latweeschu rakstneezibas wehsture (Riga, 1907)
• Pludons, Latwiju literaturas vēsture (Jelgava, 1908–09)
• Lehgolnis, Latweeschu literaturas wehsture (Riga, 1908)
• Prande, Latviešu Rakstniecība Portrejās (Rīga, 1923)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Derksen, Rick (1996). Metatony in Baltic. Amsterdam: Rodopi 

External links[link]

Latvian language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Latvian language

For a list of words relating to Latvian language, see the Latvian language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Live Latvian-language radio streams online
• On line TV in latvian
• Latvian phrasebook at Wikitravel
• Latvian Language Law in English
• Letonika
• Overview of the Latvian Language (en)
• State (Official) Language Commission (linguistic articles, applicable laws, etc.)
• English–Latvian / Latvian–English dictionary
• English-Latvian and Latvian–English online translation
• Latvian–English Dictionary from Webster's Online Dictionary – The Rosetta Edition
• National Agency for Latvian Language Training
• The Latvian Alphabet
• Examples of Latvian words and phrases (with sound)
• Languages of the World:Latvian
• Latvian bilingual dictionaries
• Latvian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)

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Russell Peters
Russell Peters in 2009
Birth name	Russell Dominic Peters
Born	(1970-09-29) September 29, 1970 (age 41) Brampton, Ontario, Canada
Medium	Stand-up, Television, Film, Radio
Nationality	Canadian
Years active	1989–present
Genres	Satire, Improvisational comedy, Black comedy
Subject(s)	Racism, Race relations, Stereotypes, Multiculturalism, Indian culture
Influences	George Carlin,[1] Steve Martin, Cheech and Chong,[2] Don Rickles,[3] Eddie Murphy
Spouse	Monica Diaz (2010–2012) 1 child
Website	RussellPeters.com

Russell Dominic Peters (born September 29, 1970)^[4] is a Canadian comedian, actor and disc jockey. He began performing in Toronto in 1989 and has been nominated for four Gemini Awards.

Early life[link]

Russell Peters was born in Brampton, Ontario, Canada to Eric and Maureen Peters. His family is of Anglo-Indian ancestry and is Catholic.^[4] His father was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, and worked as a federal meat inspector; he is regularly mentioned and featured in his comedy work.^[5] His mother was born in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. He has an older brother named Clayton who was born in Calcutta.^[6] Russell attended Chinguacousy Secondary School for grades 9–10, and North Peel Secondary School for grades 11–12 in Brampton.^[7][8][9]

Career[link]

Peters began performing in Toronto in 1989. Peters' popularity extends to several countries. He has since also performed in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Afghanistan, Sweden, South Africa, India, the Caribbean, Philippines, Vietnam, mainland China, Canada, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, France, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Norway, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Trinidad among other places.

Peters attribute performance he did on the Canadian TV comedy series Comedy Now! that was uploaded onto YouTube and became viral.^[10] While the initial video upload featured his performance in its 45 minute entirety, subsequent videos uploaded by other YouTube users were snippets of that performance, chopped into each of the cultural groups he targeted. According to Peters, those snippets made their way to those specified cultural groups, and were well received by them.^[11]

Notable performances[link]

In Canada, Peters became the first comedian to sell out Toronto's Air Canada Centre,^[12] with more than 16,000 tickets in two days for the single show. He ended up selling over 30,000 tickets nationally over the two-day sales period. A total of over 60,000 tickets were sold across six cities.^{[citation needed]} His show in Sydney, Australia on 15 May 2010 had an audience of 13,880, making it the largest stand-up comedy show in Australian history.^[13] He broke a UK comedy sales record at London's O2 Arena when he sold over 16,000 tickets to his show on 2009.^[14]

He hosted the Canada Day Comedy Festival 2006. Peters participated in a USO tour of Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Africa and Greenland in November 2007 with Wilmer Valderrama and Mayra Veronica.^[15]. Peters also currently produces and stars on the radio situation comedy series, Monsoon House, on CBC Radio One.

Peters was the host of the 2008 Juno Awards televised ceremonies in Calgary on April 6, 2008,^[16] for which he won a Gemini Award for "Best Performance or Host in a Variety Program or Series". The 2008 awards broadcast received the second-highest ratings ever for the program. He was asked to host the Juno Awards for a second year in a row. The 2009 Juno Awards took place in Vancouver on March 29, 2009.

Publications[link]

His comedy special Russell Peters: Outsourced, aired on Comedy Central on August 16, 2006. The DVD version features his uncensored performance. The DVD has been popular, especially in Canada, selling over 100,000 copies. Outsourced remained on the National DVD Chart over one and a half years after release. Peters released a second DVD/CD combo Russell Peters: Red, White, and Brown in Canada in September 2008 and in the US on January 27, 2009. The DVD/CD was recorded on February 2, 2008, at The WAMU Theatre at Madison Square Garden. Peters and his brother, Clayton Peters, who is also his manager, self-produced and financed Red, White and Brown. In May 2011, Peters released Russell Peters: The Green Card Tour a live performance recorded in front of a total audience of 30,000 over a two-night performance at O2 Arena in London, England.^[17]

On October 26, 2010, Peters released his autobiography, Call me Russell, co - written with his brother Clayton and Dannis Koromilas.

Earnings[link]

According to Forbes.com, Peters earned an estimated $15 million between June 2009 and June 2010, continuing his run as one of the highest-paid comedians after earning an estimated $5 million in the prior year's report. He was ranked as the 7th highest paid comedian by Forbes.^[18][19]

Comedic style[link]

Russell Peters' stand-up performances are mostly made up of observational comedy where he uses humour to highlight racial, ethnic, class and cultural stereotypes. He often refers his own life experiences growing up in an Indian family and impersonates various English accents of different groups in his act to poke fun at each group. As Peters told an audience in San Francisco, "I don't make the stereotypes, I just see them."^[20] Russell Peters uses his minority status to allow him to poke fun at different races in his performance, but according to an interview done for The National, he does not intend to put down or offend different races and cultures, but instead tries to raise them up through humour.^[21]

Peters' is widely known for his comedy punchlines "Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad" in which he tells a joke about his childhood with a traditional Indian father who would use corporal punishment and “Be a man!" while imitating an Asian trying to get him to pay more for an item at a shop.^[22]

Personal life[link]

Peters proposed to girlfriend Monica Diaz on July 10, 2010, at the Los Angeles International Airport. He announced the engagement via Twitter.^[23][24] The couple married on August 20, 2010 at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. The wedding was attended by about 20 guests, including an Elvis impersonator. Peters and Diaz had their first child, a girl, who was due to be born on February 23, 2011. When announcing the pregnancy, Peters told The Canadian Press, "Did I get married because she was knocked up? I would say that expedited it." His daughter was born two and a half months early (on December 14, 2010), but was healthy as Peters stated on his Twitter. She was given the name Crystianna Marie Peters.

Peters lives in Los Angeles and owns two homes there. He also owns homes in Las Vegas and Vaughan, Ontario.^[25]

Filmography[link]

Television and film appearances[link]

Peters has appeared in a few films, most recently in the 2011 Canadian-Punjabi movie titled Speedy Singhs alongside Camilla Belle, Anupham Kher, and Vinay Virmani. He has also appeared in Senior Skip Day starring Larry Miller, Tara Reid, and Gary Lundy. Besides this, he has also had short appearances in the 1994 film Boozecan as Snake's Friend, the 1999 film Tiger Claws III as Detective Elliott, the 2004 film My Baby's Daddy as the obstetrician, the 2006 film Quarter Life Crisis as Dilip Kumar, the 2007 film The Take as Dr. Sharma, and the 2008 film Senior Skip Day as Uncle Todd.

Peters starred in a Christmas special,A Russell Peters Christmas aired in Canada on 1 December, 2011. Guests included Michael Bublé, Pamela Anderson, Jon Lovitz among others.^[27]

He also acted in Duncan Jones's movie Source Code as Max, an amateur comedian with a bad attitude, and is scheduled to star as "Pervius" in National Lampoon's The Legend of Awesomest Maximus.^[28]

Acting roles – television

• "Comics Without Borders" (2008)
• Russell Peters: Red, White and Brown (2008)
• Senior Skip Day/High School's Day Off (Australia title) (2008)- Uncle Todd
• Bob's Burgers - "Moody Foodie" (Season 2, Episode 7) - Tran

Appearances on television

• "A Russell Peters Christmas" - Himself (1 December 2011)
• "Lopez Tonight" - Himself (2010)
• "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" – Himself (2009)
• "The 9th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards" (2008)- Himself (Winner – Best Large Venue Stand-up)
• "CBC News: The Hour" .... Himself – Episode dated 18 September 2008 (2008) TV episode .... Himself
• "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" – Himself – Episode dated 15 February 2008 (2008)
• "Def Comedy Jam" – Episode #8.4 (2008) TV episode – Himself/Comedian
• "Pulse: The Desi Beat" – Episode #1.9 (2007) TV episode – Himself
• "Video on Trial" – Episode #3.3 (2007) TV episode – Himself
• "Comics Unleashed" – Episode #1.6 (2009) TV episode- Himself
• The 4th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards (2039) – Himself
• The 5th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards (2004) – Nominee (Male Stand-up)
• MTV Cribs (Where he featured on two different episodes)
• "8 out of 10 Cats" (Season 12, Episode 9)

Self

• Heckler (2007)
• Let's All Hate Toronto (2007)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Russell Peters (26 July 2011). Call Me Russell. Random House Digital, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-385-66965-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=Man0-BpnFjkC&pg=PP1. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Russell Peters

• Russell named first Toronto ambassador