Talk:latve

I find this entry highly dubious. Latve is poethical synonim for Latvia. A female form of Latvis would be Latviete, the same as with other ethincal groups that still retain shorter ending - krievs = krieviete; itālis=itāliete; leitis=leitiete; grieķis, grieķiete etc. 95.68.111.174 00:26, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

You will have to ask the authors of the LLVV online, who give this word as the feminine form of latvis (albeit a much less used, poetic one). Check it out here. Another dictionary mentioning it (referencing both the LLVV and the LE1) is here. It seems to me that this term is poetic (the second link above explicitly marks it as such), which is why it makes you suspicious; but the links above are quite positive that it does exist. I'll add the label 'poetic' to this word. (By the way, I have found no evidence that Latve is a poetic synonym for Latvia; could you perhaps provide a link to one? If you can, I'll include the meaning in this entry.) --Pereru (talk) 02:13, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

LLVV listing (hard to find BTW, doesn't turn up anything when you search exact word) is a "redirect" to latvieši, them listing it as possible inflection might simply be technical approach - they list certain inflection variations for every word. But while technically possible, it is unlikely to be used - as I already pointed out, though it is poetic to use non-suffixed form to refer to Latvians, it is perfectly normal everyday use for other nation names, none of which has such feminine form. The other dictionary you refer to simply merges material for several dictionaries, including LLVV. As LLVV was published in Soviet Latvia, I suspect they might have been mildly biased about including such terms. The other source is encyclopedia, not dictionary, it probably includes only "latvji" as alternate article name. That it is poetic for "Latvia" is well known fact, for example, Rainis used it extensively in his play Daugava, on which one of the most popular modern patriotic songs Saule Pērkons Daugava is based 95.68.111.174 04:12, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

That is difficult for me to determine, since, as a non-native speaker, I cannot go beyond the available sources. In the LLVV, "latvis" is also a "redirect" (the LLVV lists both "latvis" and "latve" under "latvji", since it considers the plural form more important); is it also "technical"? The dictionary apparently treats "latvis" and "latve" as equally important (or equally unimportant). Both "latvis" and "latve" are given a genitive plural form "latvju" in the first line of their LLVV and SV entries. However, you may be right about these dictonaries being biased or overinclusive; this is certainly possible, and the phenomenon of words that don't exist but still are listed in some dictionary or dictionaries is well known. (Is there a way to find out about that?) The google attestations of "latve" I was able to find seem to all refer to a dance group called "Latve", which is probably from the "poetic Latvia" usage you mention; and this agrees with your opinion.

So here's what I'll do right now -- I'll add the "poetic name for Latvia" sense (or, to conform to the rules here, I'll create a new "Proper Noun" entry Latve for this sense) with a quote from Rainis' Daugava as the illustrative example (thanks for the tip!) and I'll mention the "female Latvian" sense as dubious (in the Usage Notes), sourcing it to these online dictionaries. In this way I'm not taking a strong position either way, and all the available information is presented to the casual reader. After all, even if "latve" is not usable as "female Latvian", maybe it existed in the past with this meaning (i.e., it may be archaic), and archaic words and senses also have a place in Wiktionary. What do you think? --Pereru (talk) 13:28, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Why are you so adamant about including rare forms? In this case you can attest it only to this one source. By calling it biased I meant that it might be avoiding defining the term as it is somewhat patriotic. By technical I meant that they havesingular for both genders in all nation names, so perhaps they felt that this needs to be the same, but not the same as normal nation name as it is poetic. Anyways your curent sidenote that Latve as Latvia is related to it originaly meaning female Latvian rather questionable, not only because it goes against common inflectional paradigm, but also because it could be either contraction or directly related to hypotetical etymology of ethnonym (supposedly there was a river with that exact name) 95.68.111.174 11:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Because of Witkionary's motto: All words in all languages. A universal dictionary with all words; just think of it! There are here archaic words from all time periods; from dead languages like Gothic, even poorly attested ones with a handful of words like Illyrian; words from languages spoken by a few hundred aboriginals in South America; and also rare, archaic, old-fashioned words. All words have a place here, as long as they actually exist or existed. I actually like this ideal; don't you? When I come upon dialectal, regional, archaic, or obsolete words in the available Latvian dictionaries, I try to include them here. (Say, balsskanis, zvirbuls, kaŗš.) The "technical" definition you gave above is possible; if we could show that this was the case (say, by contacting AILAB or even the dictionary authors themselves) and they agreed, I'd be happy to say so.

As for the sidenote, it is a historical, not synchronic, suggestion; so the point is not common, but historical, inflectional paradigms. That -e is a common feminine marker in Latvian can be seen in hundreds of words (ārste, strādniece, studente...); it occurs in words derived from masculines that, like latvis, end in -is, like e.g. politiķis, politiķe. That the new, longer endings in nationality names like angliete are secondary (i.e., recent) is not difficult to prove (see words like sieviete, originally from sieva; note also that in Latvian's sister language Lithuanian, the older nationality terms in -ė, including latvė "female Latvian", are still in use, which shows this was indeed the older pattern). All of this supports the LLVV implicit claim with latve meaning (at least originally, in the past) "female Latvian", and then later being used to mean "Latvia". The use of female names to refer to one's contry is also not infrequent; compare with French "France la Douce", or English "Britannia". (In this context, it is is also interesting that virtually all country names are feminine in Latvian.)

So, given all the above, I think indeed "Latve" as "Latvia" is probably a consquence of "latve" having meant (meaning still in some context? -- let's check all the doinas! all the dialects!...) "female Latvian" --Pereru (talk) 11:27, 21 September 2012 (UTC)