This article will address the topic of Latvian phonology, which has generated great interest and debate in different areas. With the aim of thoroughly understanding this topic, different perspectives and approaches will be explored that will shed light on its importance and impact today. Through a detailed and exhaustive analysis, the aim is to provide the reader with a comprehensive and complete vision of Latvian phonology, providing relevant and updated information that contributes to enriching the knowledge and understanding of this matter. From its origins to its impact on today's society, the aim is to offer a global vision that allows us to delve deeper into the most relevant aspects of Latvian phonology, providing a clear and detailed overview that serves as a starting point for future research and reflections.
This article is about the phonology of the Latvian language. It deals with synchronic phonology as well as phonetics.
Table adopted from Nau (1998:6)
Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal/ Postalveolar |
Velar | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | [ŋ] | |||||
Stop | p | b | t | d | c | ɟ | k | ɡ | |
Affricate | t͡s | d͡z | t͡ʃ | d͡ʒ | |||||
Fricative | (f) | v | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | (x) | ||
Approximant | central | j | |||||||
lateral | l | ʎ | |||||||
Trill | r | (rʲ) |
Latvian has six vowels, with length as distinctive feature:
Front | Central | Back | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
short | long | short | long | short | long | |
Close | i | iː | u | uː | ||
Mid | e | eː | (ɔ) | (ɔː) | ||
Open | æ | æː | a | aː |
/ɔ ɔː/, and the diphthongs involving it other than /uɔ/, 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, koka means 'made of wood', kokā means 'on the tree'; pile means 'a drop', and pīle means 'a duck'.
Latvian also has 10 diphthongs (/ai ui ɛi au iɛ uɔ iu (ɔi) ɛu (ɔu)/), although some diphthongs are mostly limited to proper names and interjections.
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. There are three types of tones:
Besides the three-tone system of the standard variety, there are also Latvian dialects with only two tones: in western parts of Latvia, 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 traũks, dràugs, raûgs correspond to Western Latvian traũks, draûgs, raûgs, and to Eastern Latvian tràuks, dràugs, raûgs.
This system is phonetically more or less similar to the ones found in Lithuanian, Swedish, Norwegian and Serbo-Croatian. The broken tone has some similarity to the Danish stød.
Latvian roots may alternate between and depending on whether the following segment is a vowel or a consonant. For example, the root Daugav- ('Daugava River') in the nominative case is , but is pronounced in the city name Daugavpils. In this example, the vocalic alternant is realized as the off-glide of the diphthong /au/. 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.').