The Latvian alphabet has 33 letters, built on the Latin alphabet with a set of added diacritics. Unlike English, Latvian spelling is close to phonetic — once you know what a letter sounds like, it's pronounced that way almost every time it appears, with very few of the silent letters or multiple-pronunciation quirks that make English spelling notoriously inconsistent.
| Mark | Appears on | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Macron (a line above the letter) | ā, ē, ī, ū | Marks a long vowel, held noticeably longer than its short counterpart (a, e, i, u) |
| Caron (a hook above the letter) | č, š, ž | Marks a palatal/postalveolar consonant — roughly the "ch," "sh," and the middle sound in "measure" |
Both mark types change the sound, not just the letter's appearance — a as in "cat" versus ā held roughly twice as long is a real, meaningful distinction in Latvian, the same way vowel length can distinguish words in several other European languages.
Because Latvian letters correspond consistently to sounds, reading aloud is more predictable for a beginner than in English — there's no equivalent of English words like "though," "through," and "tough" sharing letters but not sounds. Most of the early difficulty in Latvian comes later, from grammar (particularly its case system), not from the alphabet or pronunciation.
The Latvian course opens with the alphabet as its first unit, introducing each letter with audio so you learn the sound and the diacritic together, before moving into vocabulary and grammar.
33 letters, all based on the Latin alphabet with added diacritics. It's a phonetic alphabet — each letter corresponds to one consistent sound, with far fewer of the spelling irregularities English has.
A macron (the line over ā, ē, ī, ū) marks a long vowel sound, distinct from its short counterpart. A caron (the hook over č, š, ž) marks a palatal or postalveolar consonant sound — roughly like the "ch", "sh", and the middle sound in "measure" in English, respectively.
Yes, largely — Latvian spelling is close to phonetic, meaning a given letter is pronounced the same way in nearly every word it appears in, unlike English where the same letter can represent several different sounds depending on the word.
The alphabet is the first unit of Tarc's Latvian course, introducing each letter with audio so pronunciation and shape are learned together before moving into vocabulary and grammar.
See also: Learn Latvian · Latvian Vocabulary · Arabic Alphabet