Livonian language

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Revision as of 12:29, 20 May 2007 by imported>Petréa Mitchell (Does not need WP flag, per comment on initial revision)
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Livonian
Līvõ kēļ
[li:və ke:ʎ]
Spoken in LivoniaLatvia
Total speakers Less than 50
Language family
 Finno-Ugric
  Finno-Permic
   Finno-Volgaic
    Finno-Lappic
     Baltic-Finnic
Language codes
ISO 639-1 none
ISO 639-2 fiu (other Finno-Urgic languages)
ISO 639-3 liv
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Livonian is a highly-endangered Finno-Urgic Language closely related to Finnish and Estonian, and shares in a high degree of mutual inteligibility between all of these languages. Livonian is spoken in Livonia, which is a territory located within Latvia.


Phonology

Vowels

Livonian has 8 vowels, and differentiates between long and short sounds by marking long vowels with a "¯".

Letter Phonetic Value Letter Phonetic Value
a [ɑ] o [o]
ā [ɑ:] ō [o:]
ä [æ] ȯ [ʊ]
ǟ [æ:] ȱ [ʊ:]
e [ɛ] õ stressed: [ɨ]
unstressed: [ə]
ē [ɛ:] ȭ stressed: [ɨ:]
unstressed: [ə:]
i [i] u [u]
ī [i:] ū [u:]

Consonants

Livonian has 23 consonants. They are as follows:

Letter Phonetic Value Letter Phonetic Value
b [b] ņ [ɲ]
d [d̪] p [p]
[ɟ] r [r]
f [f] ŗ [rʲ]
g [ɡ] s [s]
h [h] š [ʃ]
j [j] t [t̪]
k [k] ț [c]
l [l] v [v]
ļ [ʎ] z [z]
m [m] ž [ʒ]
n [n], but [ŋ] if
preceeding [k]
or [g].