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Latvian orthography, historically, has used a system based upon German phonetic principles and the Latgalian dialect was written using Polish orthographic principles. The present-day Latvian orthography has been in use since 1908.〔(UCLA Language Materials Project Language Profiles Page )〕 Its basis is the Latin alphabet. For the most part it is phonetic in that it follows the language's pronunciation. ==Alphabet== Today, the Latvian standard alphabet consists of 33 letters. The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet. The Latvian alphabet lacks ''Q'', ''W'', ''X'' and ''Y''. It adds a further eleven letters by adding diacritic marks to some letters. The vowel letters ''A'', ''E'', ''I'' and ''U'' can take a macron to show length, unmodified letters being short. The letters ''C'', ''S'' and ''Z'', that in unmodified form are pronounced , and respectively, can be marked with a caron. These marked letters, ''Č'', ''Š'' and ''Ž'' are pronounced , and respectively. The letters ''Ģ'', ''Ķ'', ''Ļ'' and ''Ņ'' are written with a cedilla or a small comma placed below (or above the lowercase ''g''). They are modified (palatalized) versions of ''G'', ''K'', ''L'' and ''N'' and represent the sounds , , and . Non-standard varieties of Latvian add extra letters to this standard set. The letters F and H appear only in loanwords. Historically the letters CH, Ō and Ŗ were also used in the Latvian alphabet. On 5 June 1946, the Latvian SSR legislature passed a regulation on language reform that officially replaced the letter Ŗ with R in print.〔''LPSR AP Prezidija Ziņotājs'', no. 132 (1946), p. 132.〕 Similar reforms replacing CH with H, and Ō with O were enacted over the next few years. The letters CH, Ō and Ŗ continue to be used in print throughout most of the Latvian diaspora communities, whose founding members left their homeland before the post-World War II Soviet-era language reforms. An example of a publication in Latvia today, albeit one aimed at the Latvian diaspora, that uses the older orthography—and hence, also the letters CH, Ō and Ŗ—is the weekly newspaper ''Brīvā Latvija''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Latvian orthography」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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