Latvian is natively spoken by about 1.1 million people, primarily in Latvia, where it is the official language. It is integral to Latvian cultural identity, known for its rich tradition of folklore, traditional music, and celebrations such as Midsummer's Eve. Written in the Latin alphabet, Latvian grammar features a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, extensive use of cases for nouns, and a system of verb conjugations that indicate tense, aspect, and mood.
Stats
Language Family: Indo-European
Writing System: Latin
Writing System Type: Alphabet
Writing Direction: L to R
Tones / Pitch Accent: N
Morphology: Fusional
Cases: 7
Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: 2
Number of Verb Tenses: 3
Word Order: SVO
Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 10
Number of Consonants: 24
Areas Where Spoken
Latvia (official) (56.3%) (1.06 mil)
Resources
Apps
Mondly: https://app.mondly.com/home
Books
Peace Corps Latvian: https://www.livelingua.com/peace-corps/Latvian/Peace%20Corps%20Latvian.pdf
Websites
English-Latvian Dictionary: https://tilde.ai/machine-translation/
Latvian resource for developing vocab at a beginner level: https://elaipa.lv/Home/A1
Resource to learn basic Latvian phrases: https://www.loecsen.com/en/learn-latvian
Videos
LearnLatvian (for vocab): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_3M2qB8H-Y&list=PL4xHA91WsuDrI_NVaxallyRB1Wo0s7f52
Latvian for beginners series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUvaa8lY5Q&list=PLgdM9COgO7ADk48W9CT3WuQSx4CnAuI53