Latvian's 33-letter alphabet (see Latvian Alphabet) is one of the fastest alphabets to learn among European languages — here's how to actually make the most of that advantage.
Since most Latvian letters are identical to letters you already know from English, this "easy majority" can be confirmed in minutes, freeing up your attention for the genuinely new material: the diacritics.
Rather than treating ā, ē, ī, ū, č, š, and ž as scattered exceptions mixed in with familiar letters, study them together as a focused seven-letter set. This concentrates your attention on exactly the new information, rather than diluting it across letters you already know.
Say a, ā, e, ē, and so on back-to-back, deliberately exaggerating the length difference at first — like Arabic's shadda, this is a length distinction many learners under-exaggerate early on simply because their native language doesn't require the same contrast.
Since Latvian stress falls on the first syllable in the vast majority of words, practice this rule from the very start of alphabet study, not as a separate "pronunciation" topic tackled afterward — it's cheap to build in early and expensive to retrofit later.
See also the reference page: Latvian Alphabet.
Most of its 33 letters are identical to letters English speakers already know — only the diacritics (macrons and carons) are genuinely new material to focus on.
Study them together as a focused seven-letter set (ā, ē, ī, ū, č, š, ž) rather than as scattered exceptions mixed in with the familiar letters — this concentrates attention on exactly the new information.
Because their native language usually doesn't require the same short/long vowel contrast, so deliberately over-exaggerating the length difference at first helps calibrate the distinction correctly.
It's more efficient to build stress-placement practice into alphabet study from the start, since it's cheap to learn early and harder to retrofit once habits have already formed.