Latvian Language: Lesson 12

Conversation

Speaker	Latvian	English translation
Jānis	Labvakar, Māri!	Good evening, Māris.
Māris	Labvakar!	Good evening.
Jānis	Skaists vakars, vai nē?	Beautiful evening, isn't it?
Māris	Jā, bet drusciņ vēss un vējains. Kā tev iet?	Yes, but a little cool and windy. How are you?
Jānis	Slikti. Naktī man sāpēja auss. Tagad auss vairs nesāp, bet man galva sāp.	Bad. (Last) night my ear hurt. Now my ear doesn't hurt any more, but my head hurts.
Māris	Žēl. Vai tev ir labs ārsts?	Pity. Do you have a good doctor?
Jānis	Man nav ārsta. Man nevajag — man ir dators! Visu informāciju varu dabūt no interneta.	I don't have a doctor. I don't need (one) — I have a computer! All the information (I need) I can get from the internet.
Māris	Man datora nav, diemžēl. Ak vai, man ir kaut kas acī!	I don't have a computer, unfortunately. Oh no, I have something in my eye!
Jānis helps Māris get the speck of dust out of his eye.
Jānis	Labāk?	Better?
Māris	Jā, paldies!	Yes, thanks.
Jānis	Nu, labi. Eju. Uzredzēšanos!	Well, good. I'm going. See you later.
Māris	Uzredzēšanos!	See you later.

To hear this conversation: click here → Conversation 12

Vocabulary

Vocabulary notes

(b) kaut kas: although this pronoun is spelled as two separate words, it essentially acts as a single, indefinite pronoun. It is declined just like the pronoun kas "what, who". Thus, the genitive is kaut kā "in some way", the dative is kaut kam "to someone, for something", the accusative is kaut ko "something". There isn't really a locative form; instead one says kaut kur "somewhere", and, of course, there is no vocative.

(c) uzredzēšanos: is a combination of the preposition uz "on" and the reflexive partiple redzēšanos "seeing-each-other". Since it is a type of (farewell) greeting, it is always stressed on the second syllable. This way of saying "see you later" is actually a direct word-for-word translation (called a calque) of the German expression auf Wiedersehen, which literally means "on again-seeing". The French expression au revoir means exactly the same thing as well.

Pronunciation and spelling

New consonant pronunciation

As you can see from the above examples, this sound is produced exactly the same way as the middle consonant in words like pleasure and measure.

Additional pronunciation notes

Although the word nav "is not/are not" is written with a letter v at the end, this final consonant is not pronounced like a [v], but rather like a [w] sound in a diphthong. Thus, nav sounds something like English mouse or out (but without a final "s" or "t"), of course.

The noun vakars "evening" is spelled with a single letter k, but it is pronounced as a long consonant sound. As you may remember from Lesson 5, this is a feature of certain Latvian consonant sounds. For example, the middle consonant in each of the following words is also pronounced long:

paka 'package', Rita 'Rita', lasa 'reads', jaka 'jacket', esi 'you are', kaķis 'cat'

To review the section on consonant length, please click here → Consonant Length.

Grammar

Noun Declension Class 6

Up until now, if a noun ended in an -s in the nominative singular, that meant that it was masculine. However, almost all of the nouns in class 6 are feminine (there is one exception, which you will learn in a later lesson). Note, also, that these are feminine -i- stem nouns, meaning that many of the endings contain the vowel -i-. Here is a table which shows how these nouns are declined:

In general, this class follows the same overall pattern of endings as the other feminine nouns with one major exception: the genitive ending is identical to the nominative ending. Thus, if you wanted to say "song of the night" (i.e. "night's song"), it would be nakts dziesma, since nakts "night" has an -s ending in the genitive, as well as in the nominative.

More verbs which require the dative case

Dative noun or pronoun	Verb (in 3rd person)	Nominative noun	More literal translation	Freer translation
Robertam	sāp	galva	To Robert is hurting (the) head	Robert's head hurts
Tev	sāpēja	acs	To you was hurting (the) eye	Your eye was hurting
Kaķim	sāp	auss	To (the) cat is hurting (the) ear	The cat's ear hurts

You can see from these examples that the verb sāpēt typically refers to pain in a particular part of the body. The painful body part is the subject of the verb and, therefore, is in the nominative case. The person (or, for that matter, the animal!) who is suffering the pain is in the dative case, and the verb is in the third person. If you want to say that you are (generally) in pain, then you merely omit to mention any body part. In other words, Man sāp means "I'm in pain".

The verb vajadzēt "to need" works a little differently. Here are a few examples:

Dative noun or pronoun	Verb (in 3rd person)	Accusative construction	More literal translation	Freer translation
Man	vajag	vārdnīcu	For me is required (a) dictionary	I need a dictionary
Ritai	vajadzēja	mūsu adresi	For Rita was required our address	Rita needed our address

This verb also is used in the third person, and, similarly, the individual who requires the item occurs in the dative case. However, the item required is in the accusative (i.e. direct object) case. This results in a sentence which has no subject case (i.e. nominative) form!

(Please note: some grammars place the item required in the genitive case. In other words "I need a dictionary" would be translated as "Man vajag vārdnīcas". However, this usage seems to be changing. While the genitive case was used in these constructions at one time, nowadays the accusative is much more common. Thus, you could certainly use the genitive case in these constructions, but you would probably sound rather old-fashioned or overly formal.)

Another notable feature of the verb vajadzēt is that the verb stem ends in a g in the present tense. In all other tenses the verb stem ends in dz. Please make a note of this.

Irregular verb būt

(Note: the present tense root is normally pronounced with a open e, except for the second person singular which has a close e. Thus, you would say e*smu "I am", e*sam "we are", e*sat "you (pl.) are", but esi "you (sg.) are".)

In fact, the only truly exceptional form of būt (i.e. the one which does NOT use the verb stem es-) is the third person present tense form; ir "is, are".

Negative form nav "isn't/aren't"

(Note: the forms which are spelled with the two letters e in a row are pronounced like a long vowel. Thus, neesmu "I'm not" is actually pronounced nē*smu. Similarly, neesi "you (sg.) are" is pronounced nēsi, neesam "we aren't" is pronounced nē*sam, and neesat "you (pl.) aren't" is pronounced nē*sat.)

It is evident that the third person present tense form of būt is extremely irregular in both its positive (ir) and its negative form (nav).

Negative genitive structures

However, when these types of sentences occur in the negative, the object "owned" occurs in the genitive case:

You could think of it as if these kinds of negative sentences imply that there is a "lack of" something. In other words, mentally rephrase a sentence like "The cat doesn't have any milk" into "For the cat, there is a lack of milk". This might remind you that the item lacking must occur in the genitive case.

Exercises

Please translate the following sentences into Latvian:

1. Good evening, John!
2. Linda's ear hurts.
3. A cool night, isn't it?
4. Did your (formal) head hurt?
5. The doctor wants to see me.
6. Joseph needs some coffee.
7. My brother has something in (his) ear.
8. Anna doesn't have any juice at all.

1. no (mans) (acs)
2. pēc (pulkstenis)
3. ar (jauns) (dators)
4. uz (liels) (dvielis)

1. Ārā ir vējains.
2. Man nekas nesāp.
3. Mēs nekad nedabūjām internetu.
4. Acij nevajadzēja arstu.
5. Meitai nav interneta, bet viņai ir liels dators. Jauki!
6. Mātei nebija tējas. Žēl!
7. Pēc pulksteņa ir jau rīts.
8. Vakarā viņi vairs nevarēja redzēt. Tas ir slikti!

Ready for Lesson 13? Please click here → Latvian Language Lesson 13