Latgalian language Latgalian (''latgalīšu volūda'', lv, latgaliešu valoda) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch often spoken in Latgale, the eastern part of Latvia. It is debated whether it is a separate language with heavy Latvian ...

is a

Latvian language Latvian ( ), also known as Lettish, is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken in the Baltic region. It is the language of Latvians and the official language of Latvia as well ...

dialect.

Vowels

* occurs in complementary distribution with , so that they can be regarded as allophones of a single phoneme. * Long are rare and occur only in interjections. The phonological long counterparts of the short are the diphthongs . * There are very few minimal pairs for the opposition. In some dialects, is simply an allophone of . * are phonetically central . * Apart from and , there are also vowel+glide sequences , which are very common. Rarer sequences include , and , with the last one occurring only in

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

s and loanwords. Phonemically, they are all sequences of two phonemes, rather than proper diphthongs. In some dialects, and fall together as . can also merge with as .

Consonants

Accent

Stress

The stress is most often on the first syllable.

Tonal accents

There are two phonemic tonal accents in Latgalian, which appear only on long syllables, i.e. those with a long vowel, a diphthong, or a sequence of a short vowel and a sonorant. These are ''falling'' (also called ''level'') and ''broken'' (also called ''sharp''). However, there are only a handful of minimal (or near-minimal) pairs, such as 'swallow' and 'tomorrow', both written ''reit''. Phonetically, both of the tonal accents are falling; the ''falling'' accent is realized as an even decrease in intensity and pitch, whereas the ''broken'' accent is realized as a sudden decrease in intensity and pitch.

References

Bibliography

* * {{Language phonologies East Baltic languages Baltic phonologies