latvian

Hello, The following is an excerpt from a Latvian court document (regarding a paternity case): I can't make sense of the grammar of this sentence. In particular, I don't understand how "māte Anastasija" is involved in the action. Is she the person who made the entry (ieraksts) in the birth...

Hi, I wanted to know how the president-elect is pronounced in Latvian, and found two recordings in Forvo. What makes me wonder is when the nominative masculine singular suffix -s is pronounced. Apparently, the suffix in Edgars is pronounced but it isn't in ⟨-čs⟩ of Rinkēvičs. Is there a rule...

In Latvian there are three tones: stiepts, lauzts and krītošs. The International Phonetic Alphbet uses numerals from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) to indicate tones as in, for example, Chinese Mandarin: 想要 = /ɕjɑŋ²¹⁴ jɑʊ̯⁵¹/. That means when pronouncing /ɕjɑŋ/, you start at 2 (near the bottom), go...

Excerpt from a Latvian legal text: A translator rendered this as Is it normal to refer to ”sections” or ”clauses” of Latvian laws using numerals (”34”, ”2”), but to use letters (”one”/”first”) when referring to a ”paragraph” (daļa)? If so, do you happen to know the reasoning behind this...

Hello, Kristīne Opolais is a Latvian opera singer. As far as I know, feminine forms of Latvian surnames end in -a or-e. Can anyone explain why her surname ends in -ais, which looks like a masculine nominative ending for definite adjectives (melnais = the black one)?

Sometimes, I do monolingual review of texts that have been translated from Latvian or Lithuanian into English. In these translations, I will sometimes see non-native structures like the following: - the John Johnson Deputy Chief of Police office (i.e., the office of John Johnson, Deputy Chief...

Hello. This is a question regarding all pseudo-tonal languages (i.e., those that feature phonemic pitch accent) of Europe (e.g. Norwegian, Swedish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian). How often is it the case that you mispronounce a word using an incorrect toneme (or that you...

Hi everyone! I'm an English teacher and amateur methodologist, and I've been developing a system/curriculum of language learning that I want to test on a language I'm unfamiliar with. I chose Latvian, since I reside in St Petersburg (not far from the country), and it seems to share a lot of...

Hello, I'm trying to find the meaning of this word in both languages but it doesn't appear in any of the dictionaries that I've checked. I've only been able to find "nu" and "jau" separately, "nujausti", and "nuja". Some examples in both languages: 1. [Lithuanian] Nùjau, dar tu ką...

In Colloquial Latvian (p. 61) the same sentence is given in indicative and conditional forms: mums vajag mašīna "we need a car" mums vajadzētu mašīnu "we ought to have a car" Both sentences are impersonal with a dative experiencer, and I expect the car to be nominative: the literal meaning is...

Hi everyone, Could you help me determine in what language the following snippet is written: e.g. Es Jesus... ... Buhs mu Pawehli fawee ...Tu eewed ar Deewa... Lai flawe Mirs to... Originally it was in Gothic, so some mistakes are possible, though I did my best

Labdien, I have a quick question, how would you properly translate the name of the well-known song 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', as well as a reinterpreted improvisation 'Smells Like Latvian Spirit'? Thanks! :)

Hi, would like to ask when greeting with people first meet, labdien or Sveiki should be used, I'm going to visit Lativa later, so would like to learn how to greeting, some say labdien for people you know, then it Sveiki ok for people you first met ? thank~

Sveiki! I've bought an illustrated English-Latvian dictionary for children, where I found the following sentence in the introduction: 'Grāmatas beigās ir vārdnīciņa, kas palīdzēs saprast, kā vārdus pareizi jāizrunā.' I've always thought the object in such sentences should be in the...

Hi, With choir we are starting to learn Latvian song Es gulu, gulu. It would help much if we knew what it meant. So far my try with online dictionaries: <Latvian> Es gulu, gulu man sapnī rādās, Mans mīļais are man nerunā. <English> I sleep and in my dream I don't speak with my darling...

Hello there! I'd like to ask native Lithuanian and Latvian speakers about how they see the other language. For non-Baltic readers: Lithuanian and Latvian are two closely related languages, the only two of the Baltic branch of Indo-European languages. They are quite similar and share a great...

Hallo. I'm working on a translation and in the book a word ailien appears. The character who has this stamp in her passport is a Russian woman living in Latvia, so I guess the word means the same as "an alien" in English, but I didn't find the word in online Latvian - English dictionaries, so I...

Hi everybody, I really could use some help translating the phrase Treatment of neurotrophic keratitis/keratopathy into Latvian. Does Neirotropā keratīts ārstēšana sound right? Thank you very very much!

I was reading a Latvian-English vocabulary and I found the meaning of bagāža being luggage, but in another dictionary I found it means baggage. So, my ask is: Is bagāža only personal baggage or any baggage?

Hi! I need some help with the following phrase/word in Latvian: "Anna ar savu brūtgānu uz SPA aizbrauca" I know that it is something like "Anna went to SPA with her [...]" but I can't translate the word brūtgānu. I also have no idea on what could it mean. Can anyone help me, please? I don't...

Hello all! I was on an online Latvian course and it had Ko and Kas=what My question is when to use them?

Is there a saying or phrase in Latvian about how someone’s family (spouse and children) mean everything to them? Here are a few phrases that I would have said in English: “They are my everything” “They are my world” “They mean everything to me” “They are my life” I’m not looking for a literal...

Čau, I know that the Latvian language is most officially latviešu valoda in Latvian but it is more commonly latviski. In fact, using the nominative plural of the adjective of an ethnonym or toponym productively generates language names such as krieviski (< krievija), franciski (< francija)...

Hi there! I don't really know much about declensions, but I guess that if you say "He is at the building" and "He's got a brown moustache", the word "he" is nominative... Then why is it in latvian "viņš ir pie ēkas" and "viņam ir brūnas ūsas" and the same for the female case? Thanks again!

Sveiki! Can anyone tell me the difference between "Man ir tumši mati" and "man ir melni mati"? Thanks in advanced!

Sveiki! What is the difference between "man iet labi" and "es jūtos labi"?? They both mean "I'm fine", right? Paldies

Hello, Please help me to translate "Kroksene". I'm pretty sure there are some accents missing. And I don't have any context to help you. Just sounds like insults or bad tellings. Thanks in advance!

Hi there! I was speaking the other day with a latvian friend of mine and i told her: "sveiki", and she said "chaa", what does it mean? is it like "hello"(sveiki)/"hi"(chaa)?? Paldies!

There's a Latvian composer whom I like. http://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rihards_Dubra His name is Rihards Dubra. In order to transliterate his name in Korean, I would like to know how exactly his name should be pronounced. If you can give me the IPA code, that would be perfect.

I need to know: (2) the Latvian word for "Latvian" (the language) in the basic forms (used stand-alone as headings). Thank you.

Hello, I am hoping someone might be able to help me. I am trying to learn a few words to say so i can make a new Latvian student visiting a local school feel more welcome. At the moment I have the following but im not sure if it is correct. *Sveiks....Hello *Mani sauc.....My name is... *Ka...

HOLA A TODOS!!! Necesito saber que significa esa frase Jūs esat manējo eņģeli ... Creo que es latvia, pero, no tengo la más mínima idea de qué significa...Alguien me puede ayudar?? Oops! Estaba incompleta es Jūs esat manējo eņģeli ... Jūs esat manā sirdī ..!

Hello! Does anybody know what does this word mean? čau I need an answer please, thanks!! ;)

Hello: I find the keyword travel in latvian. I have ceļojums and ceļojumi, are them correct? What are the most common? and the meaning? Thanks

I recently spoke to a latvian friend ho told me "I'm in the house" would be es esmu majas, while I've learnt it should be es esmu majā in the locative case. Which is right?

Hi, I've just started learning latvian and I wonder if the accents are supposed to be written out in text or if they're only there so that I know which letter to stress. Thank you.

Hello, I found one website saying Latvian is 'probably' pro-drop lg. Is Latvian not like Italian which can omit the subject all the time? If there is any restriction for that, what would that be? When is it possible or impossible to omit the subject pronoun? For example, Instead of Es runāju...

Hi, everyone. I've been learning Latvian for the past six months now, as part my background is Latvian, and I'm confronted with two opposing views on which case nouns should have when preceded by the numbers 11 through 19. In one resource guide, it says that all nouns take the genitive...

Hello! I am translating a book from spanish and there apers this world - "trujiman", according to the dictioanry it is an archaic word for translator in Eastern countries, that also gives some advice. I was wondering if there are some words in altvian that would be like that Jo es nevaru...

Sveiki!! Which is the correct pronunciation of this word? I have heard said it both with full and softened "l" at the end. Paldies

Hallo! I'm writing to get a better understanding of the phrase in the title. I don't mind you correct some of my mistakes in the Latvian text below. Es protu tikai mazliet latviešu valoda. Vērtu valodu tā kā tas ir mazliet līdzīgs somu valoda. Es uzsākīju zināt/zinājums vakar. Vakardiena bija...

I'm trying to figure out word order in Latvian. If I wanted to say "How can I help you," would I say "Kā es varu tev palidzēt?" Thanks in advance, please forgive any stupid errors :o

I am trying to get a basic knowledge of Latvian grammar, and I ran across this sentence. My attempt at translation gave me this: Mums nav cukuru, tikai citronus. Is this somewhat accurate? I'm a beginner, so any help here would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Sveiki!! Can somebody explain to me the difference between rats and ritenis, using some examples possibly?

Sveiki!! My question is: may the word "vakari" ever be used to mean "west" alongside "rietumi"? I know a number of languages use the same word for "west" and "evening" as well as for "east" and "morning". Paldies.

Sveiki!! Do both these words refer to wood as timber or is "koks" only used with regard to trees? Paldies.

Sveiki! Could someone speaking Latvian please tell me what the difference between these two words actually is and which would be best to convey the meaning of the English word "witch"? Liels paldies.

Hello! I'm assuming the feminine forms of the numbers in Latvian. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And sorry that I don't use special characters. 1 = viena 2 = divas 3 = triis 4 = chetras 5 = piecas 6 = seshas 7 = septinyas 8 = astonyas 9 = devinyas 10 = desmit 18 = astonypadsmit 80 =...

Hi all, Could someone translate the following phrase into Latvian for me please regarding an ebay item sold to a Latvian buyer (listed as faulty). "Please confirm that you understand that the item is faulty (as stated in the listing)" Many thanks in advance, John

Hi! I have a small problem and I hope a native speaker of Latvian can help me. I know there is this radio station in Latvia called SWH. Could you, please, tell me how you pronounce SWH? Thank you in advance.