


The -s is assimilated after a devoiced fricative, producing a long consonant, e.g., mazs → and mežs →. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Before the masculine ending -s, voiced consonants are devoiced, e.g.↑ 2.0 2.1 The sounds and do not occur in native words.↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 An unvoiced consonant in a compound followed by a voiced consonant will become voiced, e.g., atdarīt → or.Tone is usually omitted transcribing Latvian in IPA, English Wiktionary for its Latvian entries, however, uses a notation of macron, circumflex or grave accent where necessary (note: tilde is already reserved for indicating nasal vowels in IPA, hence replacing it with a macron.) See also In Rīga Latvian the falling tone has been syncretized with the broken (meaning, its users differentiate only between the level and broken tones and perceive the falling tone as broken.) Different tones are distinguished if the stressed syllable (the first syllable, in most all cases) has either a long vowel or a diphthong, short vowels do not take on different tones, neither do unstressed syllables. Standard Latvian has three tones, by convention called, the level ( stiepts), broken ( lauzts) and falling ( krītošs,) indicated by a tilde (~), circumflex (^) or grave (`) accents respectively. Sonorants are an exception and are indicated in orthography: mamma, panna, allaž, ķerra, the long sonorants as in these words should probably be indicated both in phonetic as well as phonemic (i.e., less precise) transcriptions:,. Transcribing Latvian in IPA, however, consonant length is usually not indicated. Nevertheless, single obstruent consonants (as opposed to consonant clusters) between two short vowels are always long, e.g., Atis would be ⟨attis⟩ and aka would be ⟨akka⟩ or and. Long vowel or doubled consonant (only used for sonorants)Īt the time of its inception, a conscious decision was made that Latvian orthography does not need to show gemination/lengthening of consonants because there would be no practical benefit of doing so. On the first syllable of a word and might be

Stress ( note: stress almost always falls Separates vowel clusters that are not diphthongs – n eilgs, tr iumfs, n eieiet Somewhat like Italian sc uola, but falling
