Colloquial Latvian

The Complete Course for Beginners

Dace Prauliņš, Christopher Moseley, Dace Praulin, Christopher Moseley

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317306184
• Auflage: 2
• Thema: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Thema: Sprachen

This new edition of Colloquial Latvian has been completely rewritten to make learning Latvian easier and more enjoyable than ever before!

Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Latvian. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

What makes Colloquial Latvian your best choice in personal language learning?

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• interactive – lots of exercises for regular practice
• clear – concise grammar notes
• practical – useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
• complete – including answer key and reference section.

By the end of this rewarding course, you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Latvian in a broad range of everyday situations.

Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Unit One
Sveiki!

Hello!

In this unit you will learn how to:

• say hello and goodbye
• introduce yourself and others
• give and ask for personal information
• ask questions
• count to 10

Dialogue 1

Prieks iepazīties A pleasure to meet you (Audio 1: 9)

Peteris Prieditis is at a reception with his wife Anda when they meet a colleague of Peteris.

JĀnis	Sveiks, Pēter, kā iet?
PĒteris	Sveiks, Jāni! Paldies, labi, un tev?
JĀnis	Arī labi, paldies.
PĒteris	Te ir mana sieva Anda.
Anda	Labdien!
JĀnis	Labdien! Prieks iepazīties.
Anda	Man arī.
Janis	Hello, Peter, how are you?
Peteris	Hello, Janis, [I’m] well, and you?
Janis	[I’m] well too, thanks.
Peteris	This is my wife Anda.
Anda	Good day!
Janis	Good day! A pleasure to meet you.
Anda	Me too.

Vocabulary

sveiks	hello, hi
kā	how
iet	to go; goes
paldies	thanks
labi	well
un	and
tev	to/for you
arī	also, too
te	here, this
ir	is
mana (fem.)	my
sieva	wife
labdien	good day
prieks	pleasure
iepazīties	to get to know

Language point

Gender

All nouns, names and adjectives in Latvian are declined according to gender. They may be masculine (masc.) or feminine (fem.). You can usually tell easily whether a Latvian noun is masculine or feminine. The masculine ending for nouns is nearly always -s or -is, and the feminine is mostly -a or -e in the basic form, as given in the vocabulary lists and the glossary. (Gender will not be shown in these lists unless the word is an exception to this rule.)

Note that gender endings apply to names as well. Pēteris Priedītis is masculine, and his wife is Anda Priedīte: even the ending of her surname is feminine. As a cultural point, Latvian women born outside Latvia often use the masculine ending of their surname, partly following the conventions of their parents and grandparents as the use of the feminine ending was not universal in the interwar years, and partly because this was the name registered on their birth certificates.

Greetings and goodbyes (Audio 1:10)

sveiks! (masc. sing.) sveika!(fem. sing.) sveiki! (masc. pl.) sveikas! (fem. pl.)	greetings! hello! - the form must agree with the gender and number of people you are speaking to
labdien!	good day! - used at any time in the daytime - at more specific times of the day you can use:
labrīt!	good morning! - usually used only when you get up
labvakar!	good evening!

(In the words labdien, labrīt and labvakar the stress fall...