Latvian language

Spoken in

• Indo-European languages Baltic languages Ostbaltische languages Latvian

Lv

Lav

Lav

The Latvian language ( Latvian latviešu valoda ) is listed in the article 4 of the Constitution of Latvia anchored official language in Latvia, it is an official EU language.

• 4.1 Nouns
• 4.2 interrogative pronouns
• 4.3 verbs
• 4.4 Prepositions

General Description

Latvian belongs to the eastern group of the Baltic languages ​​within the Indo-European language family. In its present structure, the Latvian is younger than related and neighboring Lithuanian. Archaic features are found especially in the traditional folk songs and poems ( Daina ), where similarities with Latin, Greek and Sanskrit are clearer. The vocabulary contains many loanwords from German, Swedish, Russian, and recently from the English. Approximately 250 words of ordinary language are loanwords from Liv. With the accession of Latvia to the EU and the translation of extensive legal texts to gaps identified in the Latvian vocabulary. The State Translation Bureau shall study and develop new words.

The Latvian is written with the Latin alphabet. The first grammar of the Latvian ( Manuductio ad linguam lettonicam facilis ) 1644, edited by Johann Georg Rehehusen, a German. Originally an ajar to the low German orthography was used but introduced an approximately phonemic spelling the beginning of the 20th century in a radical spelling reform. This uses some diacritical mark or the overline to indicate a long vowel, the comma with a consonant to indicate the palatalization and the caron ( hooks) to generate the character " Č ", " ä " and " Ž ".

Latvian is a distinct inflectional language. It can be used and it waives Article inflectional endings. Foreign proper names get in Latvian usually a deklinierbare ending ( nominative -s or-is for masculine, -a or -e for feminine; names ending in- o are not flexed ). Moreover, they are phonologically represented in Latvian spelling ( examples are Džordžs V. Bušs for George W. Bush, Viljams Šekspīrs for William Shakespeare). Many current Latvian surnames that are of German origin, also belong to this group and are looking for the German typeface often hardly recognizable.

History in the 20th Century

With the establishment of the first Latvian state in 1918, the Latvian State Language was the first time. This was associated with a high degree of standardization in the formation of a standard language.

During the part of the Soviet Union began a Russification. Targeted promotion of Latvian immigration was almost a minority language in the Latvian SSR ( 1990, there were just 51% of Latvian speakers in Latvia, in the capital Riga, only about 30%). After 1991, drastic measures were introduced to partially make this state at least undo what also attracted the criticism of some Western countries by themselves. In 2006, again spoke 65% of the Latvian population speak Latvian as their mother tongue (in total control 88 % of the population Latvian ), and all school children need to learn their mother tongue also Latvian, so you can expect that in a few decades again reached Latvian status will have the other national languages ​​in Europe is comparable. In the larger cities and especially in the satellite towns created during the Soviet period, Russian is used in parallel with the Latvian as a lingua franca.

Since 1 May 2004 Latvian is one of the official languages ​​in the EU.

Alphabet and Pronunciation

The Latvian alphabet consists of 33 characters:

Consonants

The letter " h " f " occur only in foreign or loanwords.

Still appear following consonants in earlier writings:

• " Ŗ " a palatalisiertes "R" ( mīkstināts burts "R")
• "Ch", understood as a single volume, now written in accordance with the German "CH" as a "H".

These forms were abolished by the spelling reform in 1946 in Soviet Latvia, but continued to appear in the exile literature.

Vowels

The phonemes / e / and / æ / are usually spelled the same way, namely as e ( short ) or ē ( long). The linguist and writer Jānis Endzelīns, which was influenced by the first independence movement, used for / æ / letter ę and additionally for / æ :/ a macron. This has been and will be taken up again and again by supporters of an "extended orthography ". Originally spoken only as a diphthong o is usually as / ɔ / and / o / spoken in modern Lehn and foreign words.

All other vowels is a letter in Standardlettischen each assigned exactly.

The vowels with macron (ie ā, ē, ī and ū ) are very long, whereas the normal vowels are very short, at the end of a word usually barely audible.

The o is spoken in original Latvian words like [ uɐ ], which is not in long or short divisible as diphthong, thus making a macron superfluous. But even in borrowings, which have long been central to the vocabulary (eg oktobris ) this letter is almost always pronounced as a single short vowel [ ɔ ] or [ ɔ ː ]. A counterexample is again fashion (fashion, style), where the diphthong used. Oktobra mode thus contains three different pronounced o On the bills of the period between the two world wars, the " Ō " appears in the foreign word " nōminālvērtībā ". The sign was abolished with the spelling reform in 1946. In Latgale orthography the " Ō " is preserved.

The long and short pronunciation of the o never forms minimal pairs in contrast to all other vowels. Therefore, the other vowels need the macron to minimal pairs such as tevi ' you ' - Tevi ' fathers '; Rīga ' Riga ' - Riga ' Riga ' to distinguish the letters.

The emphasis generally says nothing about the length of the vowels, see the section on grammar. The grammatically significant distinction of unstressed vowels in long or short, for example, in German or Russian unknown.

Short, unstressed vowels, especially in final position, are widespread in Riga dialect largely entstimmt ( desonorisiert ), eg bija ' he / she was / ' is then pronounced [ bijɑ̥ ] instead of [ bijɑ ], or cilvēki ' people people ' as [ ki ː t͡silʋæ ] instead of [ ki ː t͡silʋæ ]. This sometimes seems like a swallow or absence of these vowels.

Emphasis

In Latvian, the emphasis is almost always on the first syllable, which could be due to the influence of the Livonian, a Finno -Ugric language. There are few exceptions, such as the phrases are labdien ( good day ) and labvakar ( Good evening ), the lab consisting of the items ( s ) ( good) and serving ( a) (day) and vakar ( s ) ( evening ) composed, stressed on the second syllable. Other exemptions from the everyday language, also with stress on the second syllable, paldies ( thank you) and all with chewing ( some ) starting words.

Orthography: Examples

Example 1: Our Father in Latvian and different versions: The original spelling of Latvian oriented strongly to the German language. In the 19th century were the first attempts on with diacritics. After Latvia became independent, there was a sweeping reform that was only hesitantly picked up over the years by the media.

Example 2: Daina 4124 from the collection of August Bielenstein: This example shows the effort of the linguist on the approximation of the spelling of a phonetic representation. He distinguishes between the voiced "s" and the unvoiced "s". The palatalized consonants " ģ ", " ķ ", " ļ ", " ņ " and " ŗ " he represents by a dash is as in "n". The extension of all vowels is no longer carried by the strain -h, but by an overline. Only in the use of " z " instead of " c", " ee " instead of " he ", " ch " instead of " č ", "sh" instead of " š " and "sh" instead of " ž " is even more the influence of the German role model.

Grammar

As with all the Baltic languages ​​Latvian is also strongly inflected. In an inflected language, the shape of a word changes within various grammatical categories in flexion of the word ( declension, conjugation, Komparation ). This is done firstly by adding affixes, on the other hand, by changing the word tribe. These two Flexionsarten characteristic of the Latvian, wherein the second is often due to the first; this is referred to in the Latvian philology " conditional " or the "non- conditional " sound change, which has very complicated rules. The root word is the Latvian both by ablaut (eg cataracts - roku ) as well as by specific consonant change (eg: briedis - Brieža ciest - ciešu ) be changed.

Nouns

Words male -to few exceptions, still in-s, -is or -us, feminine words usually on -a or -e. There are some female words that end in- s, eg govs ' cow ' or pils ' castle '. Furthermore, there are many exceptions in the Latvian grammar. In the three or four declension masculine nouns can be distinguished depending on your perspective, the last only differ in a palatalization and are often thought of as a. In Feminines also three or four classes are distinguished, wherein the fourth is reflective verbal nouns and is often considered separately. Neutra not exist. Well-known in the German four cases, nominative ( nominative ), genitive ( genitive ), dative ( dative ) and accusative ( Akuzatīvs ) come locative ( locative ) and traditional instrumental ( instrumental case ) and vocative ( vocative ). The last two cases are not specified in a paradigm in general, because of the instrumental always described as the replacement construction ar accusative, the vocative is formed by omitting the - s at the masculine or - š or-a in diminutives. However, the information about the number of cases differ depending on the author, depending on whether this recognizes the instrumental and vocative as independent or not. These dates vary between five and seven. Holst and Christophe go out of six cases from ..

Examples of complete paradigms:

• Masculine 1st class, draugs ' friend '

• Masculine 2nd class brālis ' brother '

• Masculine 3rd grade, tirgus ' market '

• Masculine 4th grade, akmens ' stone '

• A feminine 1st class, osta ' port '

• A feminine 2nd class egle ' fir '

• A feminine 3rd grade, sirds ' heart '

• A feminine 4th grade, iepirkšanās ' ( the ) Shopping'

Interrogative pronouns

Verbs

The Latvian as the German has six tenses: present ( tagadne ), past tense ( pagātne ), Perfect ( saliktā tagadne ), pluperfect ( saliktā pagātne ) future tense ( Nakotne ) and Futur II ( saliktā Nakotne ). The three times the present tense, past tense and future tense are formed by conjugation of each verb. Perfect, Pluperfect and Future Perfect are called composite times, but the past tense active and the auxiliary verb with the participle 'to be' are formed in the corresponding form.

The verbs of the Latvian language can thereby be divided into three Konjugationklassen.

• Verbs of the first conjugation have a monosyllabic infinitive ( prefixes not included), which ends in- t. The verbs of this class are conjugated very uneven.
• Verbs of the second conjugation end in the infinitive in -et, -at, -it - or inat. Your infinitive (without prefixes ) usually two syllables, the first person singular present tense has the same number of syllables.
• Verbs of the third conjugation are similar to those of the second. They end in the infinitive in -et, -at, -it or -ot. You have in the first person singular present a syllable more than the infinitive.

The three so-called irregular verbs but ' be ' iet ' go ' and ' give ' dot are no conjugacy class belongs.

In the third person singular and plural endings for all verbs are always the same.

The indicative active of the auxiliary But ' be ':

The indicative active of the verb of the first conjugation, Capt ' climb ':

The indicative active of the verb of the second conjugation ( subclass 2a), Zinat 'know':

The indicative active of the verb of the second conjugation ( subclass 2b) Gribet ' want ':

The indicative active of the verb of the third conjugation mazgāt ' wash ':

Prepositions

It is noteworthy that prepositions in the singular a particular case require (eg pie ' at ' always the genitive ), in the plural, however, generally the dative. " The Friend " is therefore called pie drauga, " the Friends " but pie draugiem.

Dialects

• Tahmisch
• Latgalian
• Kurländisch