Is Latvian Hard To Learn? (Answered!)

Latvian is considered a very challenging language for English speakers to learn. It is only distantly related to English and so you will often feel as though you are starting entirely from the ground up. It has extremely complex grammar with many cases and varieties of sounds, overall being very complex for English speakers.

Latvian is definitely a tough language, then, and there is no two ways about it.

If you want to learn Latvian, it is entirely within your ability to do so, but you’ve got to prepare yourself for a long and difficult journey.

Learning a language is always a tough challenge, and this will be even truer of Latvian.

Let’s find out more.

How difficult is Latvian to learn?

Latvian is considered a very difficult language to learn.

It’s worth stressing that, no matter how “easy” a language is to learn, this is always a relative term.

Learning languages is always a difficult task that takes a lot of time and commitment, so if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be prepared for this.

When it comes to Latvian, this difficulty is ramped up considerably.

Whether relatively or on its own merits, learning Latvian is going to be hard for an English speaker, and there are no shortcuts.

One helpful point of reference for understanding, in the most basic terms, why a language is difficult to learn is the language families.

English is a Germanic language, most closely related to languages in its immediate vicinity, such as Danish, Dutch, or Norwegian. Germanic languages belong to the broader family of Indo-European languages, which encompasses all but a handful of the languages spoken in Europe.

Latvian, at the very least, is also an Indo-European language, so there is some relation—but that is where the relationship ends.

Latvian is an Eastern Baltic language, part of the Balto-Slavic language group. English and Latvian are only distantly related, then, and indeed Indo-European includes languages as far removed geographically as Bengali.

Learning Latvian, then, will mean you are learning a language from which you get essentially no help or head start from your own native English.

Everything about it, at least at first, will appear alien and unfamiliar, and you’ll be learning from the ground up.

Not to mention that many consider Latvian to have some of the most complex and difficult grammar of any language.

All in all, then, you have an uphill battle in learning Latvian—so how long should the process take?

How long will it take to learn Latvian?

There are essentially two ways of answering this question.

The first is about the initial period of study you can expect to spend getting to grips with the language and getting to the point that you’re able to conduct yourself on a day-to-day basis in the language.

The FSI categorizes languages based on their relative difficulty to learn, with five categories, category five being the most difficult to learn.

Of these categories, Latvian is category four.

This means that there are only a handful of languages more difficult to learn than Latvian.

For languages like this, you can typically expect to spend around 44 weeks studying them continuously to reach a point of being able to use the language with confidence.

However, the process of learning is far from over at this point.

Once you’ve completed this initial period of study, you’ll need both to continue studying and ideally you should fully immerse yourself in the language and culture by living in the country and using the language every day.

Doing this, you can expect to become fully fluent within 3-5 years.

Again, it’s not easy, and it’s going to take time, commitment, and perseverance.

But many have come before you and learned this difficult language, so there’s nothing stopping you—and you will be rewarded for your effort!

How hard is Latvian grammar?

Many would regard Latvian grammar as among the most complex in the world.

Being an extremely flexible language, there are many rules that might be bent or broken in many cases so there are lots of exceptions you’ll need to learn.

The language also has many grammatical cases, so for any given verb or noun there may be many different forms of it you’ll need to learn.

The genitive case can be one of the trickiest parts of the language, since many modern languages lack this entirely.

Is Latvian or Russian harder?

Latvian would be somewhat easier for an English speaker to learn as it is, at least superficially, more closely related to English than Russian.

With that said, both are going to be extremely difficult and will take close to a year of study to get the basics down, with then many more years of use before you reach fluency.

So, while we may say that Latvian is easier, there’s realistically not much difference in the difficulty of learning the two languages—both are very hard and are going to take a long time to grasp.

Again, then, you are not in for a walk in the park.

Becoming fluent in Latvian will take years of study and commitment, but you’ll be more than rewarded for your effort in doing so.

Learning any language is tough, and this is especially true of a language so far removed from English as Latvian.

However, with commitment and dedication, you can master the language in a few years and enrich your own world view.

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