Latvian

Introduction

Latvian Map Latvian (also called Lettish) belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by about 1.4 million people in Latvia. Latvian is also spoken in Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and USA. Ethnologue estimates that about 1.5 million people worldwide claim Latvian as their primary language.

Its closest relative is Lithuanian, but the two languages are not mutually intelligible. Both evolved from common ancestral Proto-Baltic (which split from Proto-Balto-Slavic), but started to split starting around 800 AD. It is thought that there was a long period when Latvian and Lithuanian were two dialects of one language until possibly as late as the 16th-17th centuries, when they finally emerged as distinct languages.

Latvian village Both Latvian and Lithuanian have retained many features of Proto-Indo-European, especially in their noun systems. Of the two languages, Lithuanian is the more conservative, having retained more archaic forms that Latvian.

Church Latvian is the official language of the Republic of Latvia. It was given the status of the official state language in 1989, two years prior to the country's independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Today, Latvian is used in all official spheres of activity. It is the dominant language of the mass media, although Russian, English, Swedish, and other minority languages are also used in newspapers and broadcasts. Latvian is used in the school system at all levels. Russian and English are also used in addition to Latvian at the university level. The Latvian-speaking population also speaks Russian , Lithuanian, Polish, or Estonian, depending on the area of the country.

Dialects

Despite the small size of the country, Latvian has several mutually intelligible regional dialects. There is some disagreement as to their classification. Latvian scholars traditionally divide them into two groups -- Low Latvian (which includes two sub-dialects: Central and Tamian), and High Latvian. Other scholars refer to them as West Latvian (also known as Central Latvian or Tamian), and East Latvian (also known as High Latvian or Latgalian) which forms the basis for standard Latvian.

Structure

Sound System

Band

Choir

Latvian women

Latvian has a relatively simple sound system characterized by vowel length and pitch accent.

Vowels
Latvian has five vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/. They can be short or long. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning. In writing, vowel length is marked with a macron. For example, māja "house," mājā "at home."

Consonants
Latvian has 23 consonants, some of which can be unpalatalized or palatalized. Palatalization makes a difference in word meaning. In writing, it is marked by a dot under the consonant.

Stress
Stress always falls on the first syllable of a word. A unique characteristic of Latvian is that it has a pitch accent system, i.e., the meaning of a word depends on the pitch of the vowel. There are three pitches (or tones):

Level tone	Falling tone	Broken tone
high throughout the syllable	brief rise followed by a long fall	rising tone followed by falling tone with interruption in the middle or some creakiness in the voice
*loks* "green onion"	*loks* "arch, bow"	*loks* "window"

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Latvian.
Click here to listen to animated children's materials in Latvian.

Grammar

Latvian is a highly inflected language with a complex grammar.

Nouns
Latvian nouns are marked for the following categories:

gender (masculine and feminine);
number (singular and plural);
case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional);

Verbs
Latvian verbs agree with their subjects in person and number. They are marked for the following categories:

person (first, second, third);
number (singular, plural);
tense (present, past, future);
aspect (imperfective, perfective);
mood (indicative, imperative, conditional, subjunctive, infinitive, debitive*);

* expressing necessity of doing something.

Click here to learn more about Latvian verb conjugation.

Word order
The neutral word order in Latvian is Subject-Verb-Object. However, other orders are possible. Inflectional endings take care of keeping clear grammatical relations and roles in the sentence. Word order is principally determined by topic (what the sentence is about, or old information) and focus (new information). Constituents with old information precede constituents with new information, or those that carry the most emphasis. As an example, means "In the glass [there] is water" while means "The water is in the glass."

Vocabulary

Horse

Vocabulary
Basic vocabulary is inherently Latvian, but the language has numerous borrowings from German, Polish, Swedish, and Russian since Latvia has been annexed by these countries over a different periods in its history.

Below are some common phrases and words in Latvian.

Latvian Phrases

Click here to hear some common phrases and words in Latvian.

Below are the Latvian numerals 1-10.

Writing

Latvian sign The oldest known examples of written Latvian come from a 1530 translation of hymns made by Nicholas Ramm, a German pastor in Riga. However, secular texts did not appear until the 17th century.

Historically, Latvian was written with the Latin alphabet, following German spelling patterms. This system was replaced in 1908 by a system designed to more adequately represent the sound system of Latvian. There is a good one-on-one correspondence between letters and phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning.

The modern Latvian standard alphabet consists of 33 letters given below in their printed form. Latvian Alphabet

Click here to hear the pronunciation of Latvian letters.

Take a look at Article 1 of he Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Latvian.

Pants1.

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Resources

Click here to find out where Latvian is taught in the United States.
Click here to find learning materials for studying Latvian.

Resources for the study of Latvian language and culture
Latvian Language Pack
Languages on the Web - Latvian
Yamada Language Center Latvian resources
BBC Country Profile - Latvia
Library of Congress Portals to the World - Latvia
Wikipedia article on Latvian
Ethnologue entry for Latvian
Learning Latvian Online
UCLA Language Profile for Latvian
Omniglot Latvian Alphabet