Help:IPA/Latvian

The table below shows the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Latvian language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and.

See Latvian phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Latvian.

IPA key
Mostly based on

Geminate consonants
At the time of its inception, a conscious decision was made that Latvian orthography would not show gemination/lengthening of consonants because it was unnecessary to do so. Nevertheless, single obstruent consonants (as opposed to consonant clusters) between two short vowels are always long: Atis would be ⟨attis⟩ and aka would be ⟨akka⟩ or and. In transcribing Latvian in IPA, however, consonant length is usually not indicated. Sonorants, however, are indicated in orthography: in mamma, panna, allaž, ķerra the long sonorants should probably be indicated in both phonetic and phonemic [less precise] transcriptions:, , ,.

Tone
Standard Latvian has three tones called, by convention, the level (stiepts), broken (lauzts) and falling (krītošs,) indicated by a tilde (~), circumflex (^) or grave (`) accents, respectively. 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 and unstressed syllables do not take on different tones.

In Riga, the Latvian falling and broken tones have been syncretized: its users differentiate only between the level and broken tones and perceive the falling tone as broken.

Tone is usually omitted transcribing Latvian in IPA. English Wiktionary's Latvian entries, however, uses a notation of macron, circumflex or grave accent if necessary (the tilde is already reserved for indicating nasal vowels in IPA so it is replaced it with a macron.)