Amara's Latvian

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My Latvian Heritage

I am a first generation Graps to be born in the United States. (Did you know that Graps is from Grapis which means big black kettle?) My father was born in Riga, Latvia in the early 1930s. He fled Latvia with the Germans in the Fall of 1944, when Hitler and Stalin were trying to decide who was the mightier power. My uncle was unfortunately already in the military at the time of the Fall 1944 exodus, and remained behind the Iron Curtain when Stalin regained control of the Baltic States. I have some relatives still living in Latvia and Estonia.

Latvia's Heart

The heart of Latvia and the Latvians lies in the countryside among its majestic old oak trees and ancient hill forts. One of my favorite regions in Latvia is Gaujas National Park. The Gaujas river is the second largest in Latvia and flows by sandstone cliffs, through dense forests, secluded farmyards, slowly decaying fortresses and quiet, quaint towns. My uncle lives in Cesis, a town on the eastern edge of Gaujas National Park.

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A Picture of a Thousand Words

Click to see my favorite anti-Stalin picture (52K).

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The Latvian Language

The Latvian or Lettish language belongs to the Baltic group of languages which also includes Lithuanian and Old Prussian (now extinct). The Baltic group is one of the distinct branches of the Indo-European languages which was once spoken by the tribes of Prussia, Lithuania, Latgallia, Semmigallia, Curonia, and Selonia.

The Latvian language reflects the history of foreign occupation: in addition to Swedish and Russian traces in the vocabulary, German influences have remained in, not only the borrowed words, but also in the grammar itself.

Latvian has 22 Roman letters, with 13 of these modified by diacritical marks, and two cases of two-letter combinations, to give a total of 37 letters in the alphabet. The language also has 12 vowels, two genders (masculine and feminine), no articles (a, an, the), and the endings of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, and verbs change depending on gender, and how they are used within the sentence.

Example

The following is a couple of sentences in Latvian, and its translation into English.

Latvian

English

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Some Baltic Links

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Last Modified by Amara Graps on 3 May 2004.
© Copyright Amara Graps, 1995-2004.
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