Audio - A Reading from Moro

Artis has kindly agreed to record a page from a children's poetry book so that those of you who are not in Latvia and don't have much exposure to native speech patterns can listen to a slower, relatively low-key reading.

If you feel up to it, you can treat this as a basic diktāts. A diktāts can be roughly translated as a dictation. In Latvian schools, the teacher will read a passage and the students are expected to write as she speaks. It basically helps train their ears, spelling and grammar abilities. (This isn't a beginning diktāts though, if it were, Artis would also repeat the lines slower and provide the punctuation marks.)

We chose a page from "Suņu karaļa Moro piedzīvojumi" by Žanis Grīva, a children's book of poetry about the adventures of a little dog named Moro. There are three stanzas and each are four lines long. Your job is to listen and, if you are up to it, write or translate what you hear. Do the best you can and pause or replay the audio as you need to.

I will post the text of the passage on Monday. Feedback's appreciated - if this helps you, if you hate it and wish I'd never brought it up, or if you want this to be a regular feature, please let us know in the comments.

Download: Ogg/Vorbis or MP3