this issue next issue a ā     b c č     d e ē in review suggestions ???		Aa aita	Ā ā	Bb
Cc	Č č	Dd	Ee	Ē ē
Ff flamings	f g ģ h     i ī j k ķ	Gg gliemezis	Ģ ģ	Hh
Ii	Ī ī	Jj	Kk	Ķ ķ
Ll	Ļ ļ	Mm	Nn	Ņ ņ
this issue next issue l ļ     m n ņ     o ō p in review suggestions ???		Oo	Ō ō	Pp
Rr	Ŗ ŗ	Ss suns	Š š	Tt
Uu	Ū ū	Vv varde	Zz zutis	Ž ž
a ā     b     c č     d     e ē     f     g ģ     h i ī     j     k ķ     l ļ     m     n ņ     o ō p     r ŗ     s š     t     u ū     v     z ž

about this issue ABC's in Latvian The Animal World This resource is an alphabetic index to the common names of animals in the Latvian language. Lowercase letters in our alphabet set are linked to animal wordlists and English translations. The image alphabet set contains 35 letter pairs where each letter pair consists of an upper and lower case character. 22 letter pairs are common with the English alphabet set. The remaining 13 letter pairs contain "diacritical markings" which denote a change in pronunciation. The purpose of this issue is to test the Latvian alphabet index design and to evaluate its usefulness as a learning resource. We hope to gather your comments, and use them as a guide to working out programming and presentation details. Your corrections, updates, and inputs to these pages are welcome!

the Next Issue We plan to summarize your comments and suggestions about this resource and discuss directions and options for continued development. We will also be making clipart available for more letters. in Review We are reviewing public domain image resources to come up with the best clipart for future issues! Suggestions? If you know of any animals which begin with the Latvian letters ģ, ī, ļ, Ņ, Ō, or ŗ, please let us know!

NOTE:   Animal clipart found on this page were downloaded from sites holding public domain image archives. We hope to summarize these resources in future issues.

Some animals in this dictionary are native to Latvia; some are not. The purpose of this section is to compile notes, questions, and comments about animal names, grammar, noun latvianization, or related issues concernig the general acceptance of terminology presented throughout the "Ābece". The range and distribution of animal species is currently beyond the scope of this issue.
 
For non-native animal species without a common Latvian term, we will present a "latvianized" version [LatVer] with an explanation. We welcome your input!

"čīta"   for   cheetah
LatVer:   Latvian phonetics of a common english noun
Reference [1]: "čeks" for cheque and "čempions" for champion

"delfīns"   for   "dolphin"
Reference [1]: "delfīns" for dolphin
 
???   For words such as "delfīns", what are the main rules which dictate noun conjugation for singular and plural forms?

* feminine case noun conjugated as base "i"   -   tā ...
Example word list: acs, asins, ass, auss, avs, azots, balss, birzs, blakts, Cēsis, cilts, Daugavpils, debess, dur(v)is, dūksts, dzelzs, govs, ilkss, izkapts, jūtis, kārts, klēts, klints, krasns, krūts, kūts, lecekts, līksts, maksts, nakts, nāss, olekts, palts, pāksts, pils, pirkstis, pirts, sakts, sāls, sirds, smilts, telts, uguns, uts, valsts, vāts, vēsts, zivs, zoss, žults
Plural forms   -   tās ... blaktis, govis, utis, zivis, zosis

* masculine case noun conjugated as base "a"   -   tas ...
Example word list: deguns, gans, kalns, putns, spilvens, zvans
Plural forms   -   tie ... putni

* masculine case noun conjugated as base "consonant"   [līdzskaņu celmi]   -   tas ...
Example word list: akmens, asmens, mēness, rudens, suns, tesmens, ūdens, zibens
Plural forms   -   tie ... suņi

To differentiate between masculine and feminine nominative case nouns, answer the question "Is it tas delfīns [masculine] or tā delfīns [feminine]?". The answer is "tas delfīns".   This is based upon which sounds better.
 
For those of us where sound is not intuitive, a general rule of thumb is to memorize the feminine case noun base "i" words as "tā" and assume all others to be "tas".

To differentiate between base "a" and base "consonant" nominative (nom.) case nouns, we conjugate the singular noun in the genitive (gen.) and accusative (acc.) cases.

The answer is base "a" because it sounds better. This would make the plural form for dolphins delfīni and not delfīņi.
 
For those of us where sound is not intuitive, a general rule of thumb is to memorize the masculine case noun base "consonant" words and assume all others to be base "a".

We are looking for more tips and tricks to help us with our grammar. We also hope to extend the example word lists. Please let us know if you would like to see something included.

"gepards"   for   ???
Comment: We have a general reference comment that "gepards" is an animal. Does anyone have a more specific reference?

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