Latvian Language: Lesson 2

Conversation

Speaker	Latvian	English translation
Anna	Kas ir tas?	What's that?
Linda	Tā ir kafija.	That's coffee.
Anna	Un kas ir tas?	And what's that?
Linda	Tā ir tēja.	That's tea.
Anna	Un tas?	And that?
Linda	Tas ir piens.	That's milk.
Anna	Un tas?	And that?
Linda	Sula.	Juice.
Anna	To, lūdzu.	That one, please.
Linda pours out some juice for Anna
Anna	Paldies.	Thank you.
Linda	Lūdzu.	You're welcome

To hear this conversation, click here → Conversation 2

Vocabulary

Vocabulary notes

(b) tā and to: I've translated tā as "that", and to as "that (one)". They are actually different forms of the same basic word. However, I'm not going to go into detailed explanations about when to use each one just yet. That will have to wait for a later lesson. Just possess yourselves in patience for a while.

Pronunciation and spelling

Vowel pronunciations

The short u has a fairly straightforward pronunciation; however, the long ū sound is not that close to the English examples. If you speak any other languages, here are a few example words with a long [u] sound that are closer to the Latvian cases:

Equivalents in other languages: Spanish uno 'one', French tout 'all', German Buch 'book'.

One of the big problems that English speakers have with learning Latvian (or French, or Spanish, or German, for that matter) is that most of the vowel sounds in these languages are pure vowels, whereas, most common English vowels are diphthongs.

The word "diphthong" goes back to Greek: a prefix di- meaning 'two', and a root phthong meaning 'voice' or 'sound'. Thus, a diphthong is a "double sound". Specifically, it's a speech sound that (a) moves quickly from one vowel position to another, or (b) from a vowel position to a semivowel position.

Let's take the second definition. A semivowel is a sound like [w] or [j]; for this lesson, let's concentrate on [w]. There are lots of diphthongs in English which go quickly from a vowel position to [w] sound. Here are a few examples:

In each case the tongue and lips start out at a vowel position ([a], [o], or [u]), and quickly move to the position for a [w], which is: (a) lips rounded and forming a circle, and (b) back of tongue raised towards the (back of the) roof of the mouth. You can test this out by saying the word wet (for example) very slowly. Pay attention to where your lips and tongue are just before you say the [w] sound, you'll notice that (a) your lips are rounded and forming a circle, and that (b) the back of your tongue is raised up, close to the roof of the mouth (specifically, the soft palate).

In order to show that there is a [w] sound in English words like ooze, doom, coot etc., listen to the recording of the English words, as listed below. For each recording I first say each word correctly (with the vowel pronounced as a diphthong, i.e. the vowel is followed by a [w] sound), and then incorrectly (with the vowel pronounced as a pure vowel, i.e. the vowel is NOT followed by a [w] sound):

• ooze (x 2)
• doom (x 2)
• coot (x 2)

Try to learn to say Latvian ū as a pure vowel - that is, without a [w] sound following it.

The next sound is the diphthong ie. This diphthong doesn't have a close equivalent in North American English. The closest I could come is the pronunciation of upper class speakers of British English; their dialect is called RP, or "Received Pronunciation" because they are typically the ones who were "received" by the queen. Take a look at the examples I have provided below, which show a phonetic [i] vowel followed by the letter r. In this dialect, these r's are not pronounced; instead they are replaced by a very short vowel (called a "schwa"), and the combination of the [i] and the schwa form a diphthong. This diphthong is fairly close to how the Latvian diphthong ie is pronounced:

Latvian letter	English example words (closest equivalent is underlined)	Latvian example word (word links to audio track)
ie	British (RP = Received Pronunciation) beer, fear, mere	iet 'to go'

If the British RP pronunciation doesn't help you, try doing the following:

1. say the vowel [i] (as in ear)
2. now say the vowel [ʌ] (as in up)
3. now say [i] quickly followed by [ʌ]
4. practise saying this more and more quickly until the first vowel blends quickly into the next one

The last pronunciation we will deal with is the letter o as pronunced in the word to "that (one)". In addition to this word, notice also the Latvian example given below - which actually has two of these o's:

Latvian letter	English example words (closest equivalent is underlined)	Latvian example word (word links to audio track)
o	British (RP = Received Pronunciation) poor, sure, boor	ozols 'oak'

This is another one of those dipthongs that has no close equivalent in North American English. However, once again we can refer to the British RP pronunciation. If this doesn't do it for you, here are my tricks for learning how to say this diphthong.

1. say the vowel [u] (as in poor)
2. now say the vowel [ʌ] (as in up)
3. now say [u] quickly followed by [ʌ]
4. practise saying this more and more quickly until the first vowel blends quickly into the next one

Unfortunately, o is one of the few Latvian letters that has multiple pronunciations. However, take heart, because we are only learning the diphthongal pronunciation of o in this lesson. (If you are curious and want to learn more about Latvian o's, without waiting for the additional pronunciations which will turn up in later lessons, you can check out my discussion on the Latvian "o").

Consonant pronunciations

Latvian letter	English example words (closest equivalent is underlined)	Latvian example word (word links to audio track)
f	fin, fat, full	filma 'film'
j	yes, yank, you	jāt 'to ride'
p	spin, spell, spare	pats 'self'

The [f] sound is identical to the one in English. It is normally found only in Latvian words which were borrowed from other languages (e.g. filma 'film', fakts 'fact', kafija 'coffee').

In Latvian the letter j is NEVER used to stand for a consonant like the first sound in the English word jet. Instead, it ALWAYS is used to represent the semivowel sound (as in the first sound of yet; this is also the way most European languages use this letter).

Finally, the sound represented by the letter p is basically like the English [p], except that it is ALWAYS an unaspirated sound (just like Latvian t and k). If you need a refresher course on how to make an unaspirated sound, please go back to this appendix → Aspirated vs. Unaspirated Consonants.

Stress

In English, where the stress (or emphasis) falls on a word is not really predictable. In Latvian it is highly predictable. If in doubt, put the stress on the FIRST syllable of the word. You will be right most of the time.

However, the word paldies is an exception. Whenever you thank some one by using the word paldies, you must put the emphasis on the SECOND syllable. For a more detailed discussion of stress (or "word accent"), please see → Latvian Pronunciation Rules: Stress.

Grammar

In the conversation above, you can see that words like kafija and tēja appear with the tā form of "that"; this is because they have the feminine gender. Compare this to piens and galds (from Lesson 1), which appear with the tas form of "that"; these are masculine nouns. However, when asking the question "What is that?" the masculine form is always used. Why is this? The questioner clearly doesn't know the gender of the noun he/she is asking about, so they use the default form, which is always the masculine form. So remember, if you are asking about something, always use the masculine form.

As you will have noticed, the ending of the feminine nouns is -a, while the masculine one is -s. This isn't always the case, but it is true for the great majority of nouns in Latvian. For example, when a new word is borrowed into Latvian from another language, it is almost always assigned an -s or -a ending. Take a look at the following examples, which illustrate this:

Masculine noun	Translation	Feminine noun	Translation
rums	rum	filma	film
viskijs	whiskey	baterija	battery
marketings	marketing	Londona	London

You don't have to learn these words just yet, but notice that each of them has either a masculine or feminine ending (i.e. -s or -a).

Exercises

Please translate the following sentences into Latvian:

1. Yes, that is a table.
2. That is juice.

Ready for Lesson 3? Please click here → Latvian Language Lesson 3