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The Latvian language belongs to Baltic branch of Indo-European language family. The Baltic languages are divided into Easter Baltic and Western Baltic languages. There are only two alive Baltic languages in nowadays - the Latvian and the Lithuanian langua ge, both of them belong to Easter Baltic languages. There are 3 dialects in the Latvian language - the Central dialect, Tamian and the High Latvian dialect and more than 500 separate languages or dialects (512). These separate dialects are influenced by s tandardization, social and culture historical factors and are subordinated to the process of improvement and accommodation to literary standard language. The literary standard language has been developed on the basis of the Central dialect, Zemgalian lang uage (dialect).

The Latvian language has its written form for about 400 years. There have been two orthography traditions since the World War II: - orthography used by Latvians in Latvia; - orthography used by Latvians abroad. Besides, Latgalian orthography tradition exists in the Eastern part of Latvia.

In spite of various contacts with other languages, the inner system of Latvian survives its stability. Latvian is described by complex grammatical system and conservatism to a certain extent. As to structure, Latvian is synthetically inflected language.

The graphical pictures of Latvian letters:

Aa	Āā	Bb	Cc	Čč
Dd	Ee	Ēē	Ff	Gg
Ģģ	Hh	Ii	Īī	Jj
Kk	Ķķ	Ll	Ļļ	Mm
Nn	Ņņ	Oo	Pp	Rr
Ss	Šš	Tt	Uu	Ūū
	Vv	Zz	Žž

Nouns

Latvian nouns could be divided into declinable and indeclinable nouns. Most of Latvian nouns are declinable. Declinable nouns in Latvian are divided into 6 declensions (first declension, second declension, third declension, fourth declension, fifth declension, sixth declension). The declension of noun is determined by its ending and gender.

Gender	Ending (sing. nom.)	Declen- sion	Examples	Exceptions
masculine	s, š	1	dēls (son) teļš (calf)
masculine	is	2	dēlis (plank)	akmens (stone), asmens (blade), zibens (lightning), ūdens (water), mēness (moon), rudens (autumn), suns (dog), sāls (salt)
masculine, feminine	us	3	medus (honey) pelus (chaff)
feminine, masculine,	a	4	meita (daughter), puika (boy), pļāpa (chatbox2)
feminine, masculine	e	5	dēle (leach), bende (executioner)
feminine	s	6	zivs (fish)	ļaudis (people)

In addition there is a special group of reflexive nouns which are derived from reflexive verbs. Most of them ends with -šanās but there are few which ends with -tājās, -tājies, -ējies, -ājies, -umies.

Reflexsive nouns

Reflexive nouns are derived from reflexive verbs. Most of them ends with -šanās but there are few which ends with -tājās, -tājies, -ējies, -ājies, -umies. Reflexive nouns have special rules for declension shown in following table.

Number	Nom.	Gen.	Dat.	Acc.	Loc.	Voc.
sing.	-ās	-ās	-	-os	-	-
plur.	-ās	-os	-	-ās	-	-
sing.	-ies	-ās	-	-os	-	-
plur.	-ies	-os	-	-os	-	-

Examples

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	vēlēšanās	vēlēšanās
Genitive	vēlēšanās	vēlēšanos
Dative	-	-
Accusative	vēlēšanos	vēlēšanās
Locative	-	-

Case Generation

The case generation in Latvian is realised by adding ending (determined by declension of noun) to the stem of noun. 2nd, 5th and 6th declensions includes rules when the consonant preceding the case ending is to be palatalised.

Case endings.

Declen- sion	Number	Nom.	Gen.	Dat.	Acc.	Loc.	Voc.
1	sing.	-s, š	-a	-am	-u	-ā	-s
1	plur.	-i	-u	-iem	-us	-os	-i
2	sing.	-is	-a	-im	-I	-ī	-i
2	plur.	-i	-u	-iem	-us	-os	-i
3	sing.	-us	-us	-um	-u	-ū	-us
3	plur.	-i	-u	-iem	-us	-os	-i
4	sing.	-a	-as	-ai	-iu	-ā	-a
4	plur.	-as	-u	-ām	-as	-ās	-as
5	sing.	-e	-es	-ei	-I	-ē	-e
5	plur.	-es	-u	-ēm	-es	-ēs	-es
6	sing.	-s	-s	-ij	-i	-ī	-s
6	plur.	-is	-u	-īm	-is	-īs	-is
refl.	sing.	-ās	-ās	-	-os	-	-
refl.	plur.	-ās	-os	-	-ās	-	-
refl.	sing.	-ies	-ās	-	-os	-	-
refl.	plur.	-ies	-os	-	-os	-	-
3, fem.	plur.	-us	-u	-ūm	-us	-ūs	-

In some cases endings differs from ending of Table:

- the masculine nouns of 4th declension has ending -am in singular dative;

- the masculine nouns of 5th declension has ending -em in singular dative;

- the first declension nouns which ends with -tājs, -ājs, -ējs, -nieks has no ending in singular vocative;

- diminutives has no ending in singular vocative;

- reflexive nouns which ends with -umies are not used in genitive.