Latvian discussion group

[Sean of the Dead]

No, I mean how can you tell which declension a noun belongs to? Like how am I supposed to know if a noun belongs to the first declension and not one of the others?

[Sol Invictus]

No, I mean how can you tell which declension a noun belongs to? Like how am I supposed to know if a noun belongs to the first declension and not one of the others?

Oh by its ending. I posted declension table in another thread where you said that Latvian seems irregular to you, I'm not sure you read it, here, but I assumed you allready have read some information anyway.

[Levo]

By the way, I support the idea of telling us about good bands, films, any TV-series or Latvian-speaking cartoons available on the net, because it is really hard to get any good material. :/
Though it is already good that Sol posts herself bilingually sometimes.

[Sol Invictus]

By the way, I support the idea of telling us about good bands, films, any TV-series or Latvian-speaking cartoons available on the net, because it is really hard to get any good material. :/
Though it is already good that Sol posts herself bilingually sometimes.

Youtube is full of that stuff and I dislike posting bilingualy because I have trouble translating what I said word to word

[Levo]

By the way, I support the idea of telling us about good bands, films, any TV-series or Latvian-speaking cartoons available on the net, because it is really hard to get any good material. :/
Though it is already good that Sol posts herself bilingually sometimes.

Youtube is full of that stuff and I dislike posting bilingualy because I have trouble translating what I said word to word

Yes, just if you could tell us some names, please Lúdzu
(What a gayish post...)

[Sol Invictus]

I don't like them, how do I know ? There are some suggestions in music thread and elsewhere on this forum (does anyone ever use them ?), only internet radios with Latvian songs/a lot of talking I know are Latvian radio and Latvian music radio (I'm quite sure I linked to it in the music thread), other than that Radio Skonto and Radios SWH brodcast in internet, but songs are mostly in english and they don't talk much. There are two lists of Latvian films on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_La ... _1962-1989 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latvian_films similarily you could look at this category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Latvian_music and its Latvian version and Latvian Wikipedia's article on Latvian music contains a long list of related stuff http://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mūzika_Latvijā including some artists worth listening to, all TV (and cartoon) sites I know are not for free, except for TV3: http://viastream.player.mtgnewmedia.se/

Just find something you like on youtube and surf trough the related videos (works great for me most of the time)

[Levo]

I don't like them, how do I know ? There are some suggestions in music thread and elsewhere on this forum (does anyone ever use them ?), only internet radios with Latvian songs/a lot of talking I know are Latvian radio and Latvian music radio (I'm quite sure I linked to it in the music thread), other than that Radio Skonto and Radios SWH brodcast in internet, but songs are mostly in english and they don't talk much. There are two lists of Latvian films on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_La ... _1962-1989 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latvian_films similarily you could look at this category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Latvian_music and its Latvian version and Latvian Wikipedia's article on Latvian music contains a long list of related stuff http://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mūzika_Latvijā including some artists worth listening to, all TV (and cartoon) sites I know are not for free, except for TV3: http://viastream.player.mtgnewmedia.se/

Just find something you like on youtube and surf trough the related videos (works great for me most of the time)

We thank you so much.

[Levo]

Hm, these were already very useful.

Hey, there is something here...

When I hear Latvians saying "optimismas" (or any forms of it), that beginning "O" sounds like A in my language. Not close to [uo] or [o] at all, sounds something like a nasal indo-european "A". (So a bit different from our A and I-E A "too"). And it is not the only case I hear it like that, but those words are also not Latvian-originated ones.

And another thing:
Vecs, sens, melns... The book I was learning Latvian from teaches very well which are those words where E is an opened one and not the other one. But, how opened is it exactly?
Sometimes it is like Hungarian E/Estonian ä; sometimes like Finnish ä which is almost A for me.

[Sol Invictus]

By the way, I support the idea of telling us about good bands, films, any TV-series or Latvian-speaking cartoons available on the net, because it is really hard to get any good material. :/
Though it is already good that Sol posts herself bilingually sometimes.

Check out http://www.pasakas.net it has a ton of fairytales, stories, cartoons and other stuff. I hope its design isn't too scary - stories come in audio and from what I know are suited for teenagers too, not just kindergarden kids, fairytales have both text and audio version and everything else seems to be on video, so it gives plenty of options to listen to Latvian

[Sol Invictus]

Hm, these were already very useful.

Hey, there is something here...

When I hear Latvians saying "optimismas" (or any forms of it), that beginning "O" sounds like A in my language. Not close to [uo] or [o] at all, sounds something like a nasal indo-european "A". (So a bit different from our A and I-E A "too"). And it is not the only case I hear it like that, but those words are also not Latvian-originated ones.

And another thing:
Vecs, sens, melns... The book I was learning Latvian from teaches very well which are those words where E is an opened one and not the other one. But, how opened is it exactly?
Sometimes it is like Hungarian E/Estonian ä; sometimes like Finnish ä which is almost A for me.

There is no such word "optimismas" you know, that's like Lithuanian I recently noticed that in other languages they don't seem to open their mouth as wide as we do, when pronouncing o, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, according to which Hungarian o is closed, while Latvian o is open, I wouldn't say it sounds like a, while at the same time examples in Wikipedia say that this sound is o in English hot, which does sound kind of like ā to me - go figure. Wide e is æ, which means it should be same as English a, as for Finno-Ugric languages afore mentioned encyclopedia claims that this sound is Finnish ä, while in Estonian ä seems to represent both wide and narrow e, and Hungarian has only the narrow e sound. These two sounds can happily co-exist in words with the same root (for example sen has narrow e, while sens has wide e), plus recent disappearance of ŗ causes inconsistencies in verb pronunciation - maybe you're just mixing them up.

[reegs]

And another thing:
Vecs, sens, melns... The book I was learning Latvian from teaches very well which are those words where E is an opened one and not the other one. But, how opened is it exactly?
Sometimes it is like Hungarian E/Estonian ä; sometimes like Finnish ä which is almost A for me.

well, as I've have studied Finninsh and i've been meeting some Finnish gays regulary, i would say - our 'e' is not so opened as Finnish 'ä'. (i don't know about Hungarian/Estonian. may be - like 'ä' in Swedish - which sounds for me not so opened as in Finnish...)

[ciuppo2000]

Hm, these were already very useful.

Hey, there is something here...

When I hear Latvians saying "optimismas" (or any forms of it), that beginning "O" sounds like A in my language. Not close to [uo] or [o] at all, sounds something like a nasal indo-european "A". (So a bit different from our A and I-E A "too"). And it is not the only case I hear it like that, but those words are also not Latvian-originated ones.

And another thing:
Vecs, sens, melns... The book I was learning Latvian from teaches very well which are those words where E is an opened one and not the other one. But, how opened is it exactly?
Sometimes it is like Hungarian E/Estonian ä; sometimes like Finnish ä which is almost A for me.

The IPA symbols [e] and [ɛ] match by and large the sounds of Italian closed and open e.

Taking into consideration this fact as a starting point I have always had the impression that Latvian open e is a little bit more open than the Italian one and therefore very near to the sound represented by the IPA symbol [æ].

Also the Latvian closed e seems to me a little bit more open than its Italian counterpart, but if this were the case the place between the IPA symbol [e] and the IPA symbol [ɛ ] in which we should place the symbol corresponding to the sound of the Latvian closed e (MID / FRONT) is ... still empty!!!

If we represent the sound of the Latvian closed e with the symbol [E], we would have the following series of IPA symbols representing front vowels with an increasing degree of "openness", that is from the less open to the most open:

[i] [e] [E] [ɛ] [æ] [a].

Ciuppo2000

[Levo]

I saw a Latvian car today in Viljandi, I was so glad
I would really like to see Valka, Valmiera, and some other cities nearby if I am already here in the North. Any good tips for a trip?

[Sol Invictus]

What do you want to know ? I've been to Valmiera once, briefly, they have a church, a theater and a river, I haven't been to Valka, but as the Estonians accused Valka of polluting their waters recently, I suspect they also have a river and the border and Estonians

[Levo]

What do you want to know ? I've been to Valmiera once, briefly, they have a church, a theater and a river, I haven't been to Valka, but as the Estonians accused Valka of polluting their waters recently, I suspect they also have a river and the border and Estonians

Valmiera is the brother city of Kecskemét or on the way to become.
And "Man", you're in Latvia then! Besides it is a city of a long history, it is already a pleasure to walk in the main streets of such a place. At least for a Hungarian (and German, and Argentinian, yeah ).

[Levo]

I saw there are only three trains going per day between Valga and Césis.
And couldn't really find a Latvia-wide bus-schedule on the net. I would really thank if someone could help me finding such a page. Thank you!

[mak]

http://www.1188.lv/satiksme/starppilsetu_autobusi/
(you can click EN in the upper right corner)

[Sol Invictus]

Didn't I tell you about trains in Latvia ? 1188 is good for buses and trains and everything, but you can check http://www.autoosta.lv/ as well

BTW, you can check out Mazsalaca, if you want to go to Valmiera, it's in the neighborhood, they have a nature park, if that's your thing, also spend some time in Cēsis, if you are planing to take that train. Most cities have web sites with tourism information (which I know, because when I used to edit Wikipedia, I made sure that all Latvian cities have at least stub article, preferably linking to their sites; there even is a map showing their whereabouts in case you don't know )

[Levo]

Thank you very much!
Yes, I remembered 1188, checked it but it doesn't appear normally and couldn't see the English function at the edge and otherwise my Latvian was too limited to be able to find the bus-schedules.
Autoosta is very good.
Yes, I had the same idea, if it was only up to me, I would most likely stop in Valmiera, Césis and Sigulda too, but I don't want to force any of my travel-partners into too much they don't want to do.
We have many plans regarding Latvia.
Only if the weather wasn't so bad already now. It is like the end of October at home. We leave some places for "pavasaris" for sure.

[Sol Invictus]

Yeah, what we have here isn't typical September weather - for me because it has been too cloudy, for Estonians, I heard, it's too warm The thing is that people go to Sigulda now, to see autumn leaves, not in Spring