Comments for Learning Latvian

Comment on Wordy Wednesday: The Magic of a Single Letter by Evita

Evita — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:29:39 +0000

I’m a native Latvian speaker and I would definitely translate the third one as “Dārzā ir suns”. The reason is that you should put the most important word at the end, and it seems that the dog is a new development (it wasn’t in the garden before) so you should leave it as the last word of the sentence.

Comment on Counting One by One by Valoda

Valoda — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:17:38 +0000

Ahh, finally a complete declension table of trīs. I’ve looked for it a long time. Thanks! :)

Comment on Consonant Changes by Cori Rozentāle

Cori Rozentāle — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:28:46 +0000

See this handy chart on the declensions. The red font indicates which endings will have changes occur when possible. :)

Basically, the 2nd changes in the singular genitive and in every case in the plural. So, if we have brālis (brother) and decline it out, we’ll get the following:
vsk. Kas? brālis Kā? brāļa Kam? brālim Ko? brāli Ar ko? ar brāli Kur? brālī
dsk. Kas? brāļi Kā? brāļu Kam? brāļiem Ko? brāļus Ar ko? ar brāļiem Kur? brāļos

I took a look at your page. Looks like you’re pretty well correct, though my references don’t break out -st- or -nn- as they seem to be already classified under -n- and -s-/-t- respectively.

Comment on Consonant Changes by Valoda

Valoda — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:52:23 +0000

So the changes appears (now I’m speaking only ’bout the 2nd declension) not just in the plural genitive? Hmm, that’s interesting, would you be so kind and tell me more a bit, please? :)

Btw, I’m from Hungary and I also learn latvian, but mostly on my own, cos here (in Hungary) no one can teach you latvian language. I’ve developed my summary about consonant changes too (depends on my own observations). Can take a look on it? But only if it won’t be a huge problem for you. Thanks! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PMPj-MUjL8tmXRTgChaESV0q4oaLtDTX_4urHpQyPeg/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

Comment on Consonant Changes by Cori Rozentāle

Cori Rozentāle — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:26:46 +0000

Quite true. The 2nd is simply where they show up the most. The 5th and 6th generally only have the change in the plural genitive. :)

Comment on Consonant Changes by Valoda

Valoda — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:18:03 +0000

The consonant changes also appears in the 5th and in the 6th declensions. But only if I know well. :)

Comment on Wordy Wednesday: The Magic of a Single Letter by Cori Rozentāle

Cori Rozentāle — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:26:15 +0000

You are so random sometimes. (I don’t mind a bit.) :)

1. Suns ir dzīvnieks.
2. Suns ir dārzā.
3. Suns ir dārzā.

‘There’ in sentence 3 is a “placeholder subject” or “empty subject” for English, it is unnecessary in Latvian. You could translate that sentence multiple ways… The dog is in the garden; in the garden there is a dog; there is a dog in the garden, etc. This is one where word-for-word translation is a mistake, Latvian doesn’t need empty subjects like English does. If you can boil down the statement and remove extraneous words that function as placeholders, you’ll have an easier time translating. Look at the meaning, not the construction.

Here’s a link about the empty subject and “it” that explains it more in-depth. (It and There are both empty subjects.)

If, however, you mean that you are pointing at a dog in a specific garden, as in “there in that garden is a dog” (with assumed pointing/demonstrating) then that would be “Tajā dārzā ir suns.”

4. Šeit ir suns. Assuming the dog is in the immediate vicinity of the speaker. You could translate it in English as “there is a dog here”, I guess too. :) Another empty ‘there’, I might point out.

Comment on Wordy Wednesday: The Magic of a Single Letter by Eric

Eric — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:05:02 +0000

Liels paldies again for upkeeping this thread!

I apologise for the random questions I post, but I have another haha. How does Latvian translate these four English uses of to be?

1. “The dog is an animal.”

2. “The dog is in the garden.”

3. “There is a dog in the garden.”

4. “Here is a dog.”

I’ve attempted one and two in Latvian but I don’t know if they are right and I don’t how to translate 3 and 4.

1. Suns ir dzīvnieks.

2. Suns ir dārzā.

Comment on Wordy Wednesday: The Magic of a Single Letter by Cori Rozentāle

Cori Rozentāle — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:31:21 +0000

Wow! That is incredibly neat! I had no idea that would be the way they would be related though. Thank you!

Comment on Wordy Wednesday: The Magic of a Single Letter by Dace

Dace — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:34:21 +0000

Fascinating story – they are indeed related! The original meaning of ‘burt’ was ‘to cut’ or ‘to cut into’ therefore ‘burts’ originally meant ‘a cut in a tree/piece of wood’. This then developed into ‘burtkoks’ (‘a piece of wood with cuts’) – a piece of wood with marks cut into it which was used for divination and other magical stuff. Later these ‘burtkoki’ were used also used for bookkeeping to record the accounts (probably something like the peasant Jānis brought five pigs to the muiža – or manor house – today). In the nineteenth century there was a movement to purify the Latvian language and many Latvian words were developed to replace German ones. Alunāns was one of the prime movers in this process – he thought (wrongly) that the ‘burti’, i.e. ‘cuts’, were like runes and so he suggested the use of this word to replace the word ‘bokstāvs’ which had come from the German ‘Buchstabe’ – ‘letter’, and the rest, as they say, is history!
Courtesy of the Latviešu etimoloģijas vārdnīca by Konstantīns Karulis.