This article is about the

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

of Latvian. It deals with synchronic phonology as well as phonetics.

Consonants

Table adopted from * are denti-alveolar, while are alveolar. * The consonant sounds are only found in loanwords. * is only an allophone of nasals before velars and . * Latvian plosives are not aspirated (unlike in English). * Voiced and voiceless consonants assimilate to the subsequent consonant, e.g. or . * Voiced consonants (e.g. /b d / etc.) are not devoiced word-finally: , . * Consonants can be short or long; long consonants are represented with double letters in the orthography: . * Plosives and fricatives that occur between two short vowels are lengthened, as in , and words spelt with ⟨zs⟩, pronounced as , or ⟨šs⟩ or ⟨žs⟩, both pronounced as �ː * A palatalized dental trill is still used in some dialects (mainly outside Latvia) but quite rarely, and hence the letter was removed from the alphabet.

Vowels

Latvian has six vowels, with

length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with Dimension (physical quantity), dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a Base unit (measurement), base unit for length is chosen, ...

as distinctive feature: , and the diphthongs involving it other than , are confined to loanwords. The vowel length ratio is about 1:2.5. Vowel length is phonemic and plays an important role in the language. For example, means 'made of wood', means 'on the tree'; means 'a drop', and means 'a duck'. Latvian also has 10

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s (), although some diphthongs are mostly limited to proper names and interjections.

Pitch accent

Standard Latvian and, with a few minor exceptions, all of the Latvian dialects, have fixed initial stress. Long vowels and diphthongs have a tone, regardless of their position in the word. This includes the so-called "mixed diphthongs", composed of a short vowel followed by a

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

. There are three types of tones: ; level (also drawling, sustained) tone () : high throughout the syllable : e.g., ('spring onion') ; falling tone () : brief rise followed by a long fall : e.g., ('arch') ; broken tone (''lauztā intonācija'') : rising tone followed by falling tone with interruption in the middle or some creakiness in the voice : e.g., ('window') Besides the three-tone system of the standard variety, there are also Latvian dialects with only two tones: in western parts of

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

, the falling tone has merged with the broken tone, while in eastern parts of Latvia the level tone has merged with the falling tone. Hence, the Central Latvian , , correspond to Western Latvian , , , and to Eastern Latvian , , . This system is phonetically more or less similar to the ones found in Lithuanian, Swedish, Norwegian and

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

. The broken tone has some similarity to the Danish

stød Stød (, also occasionally spelled stod in English) is a suprasegmental unit of Danish phonology (represented in non-standard IPA as ), which in its most common form is a kind of creaky voice (laryngealization), but it may also be realized as a gl ...

Alternations

Latvian roots may alternate between and depending on whether the following segment is a vowel or a consonant. For example, the root ('

Daugava River The Daugava ( ), also known as the Western Dvina or the Väina River, is a large river rising in the Valdai Hills of Russia that flows through Belarus and Latvia into the Gulf of Riga of the Baltic Sea. The Daugava rises close to the source of ...

') in the nominative case is , but is pronounced in the city name . In this example, the vocalic alternant is realized as the off-glide of the diphthong . However, when following a vowel that does not form an attested Latvian diphthong (for example, ), is pronounced as a monophthong, as in ('fish-NOM.SG.'; cf. 'fish-NOM.PL.').

Notes

References

* * {{Authority control Latvian language Baltic phonologies