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Latvian nouns change their ending to show their role in a sentence. There are seven cases, and the nominative is the starting point: it is the form in the dictionary and the form of the subject. It answers the question Kas? (Who? What?).

The pattern is easy to remember: masculine plurals end in -i, feminine plurals in -s.

When to use it

• For the subject: Students lasa grāmatu. - The student is reading a book.
• After ir ("is") to say what someone or something is: Viņa ir skolotāja. - She is a teacher. Note there is no "a": Latvian has no articles at all.
• In lists, signs and labels: Rīgas Centrāltirgus (Riga Central Market), Kafejnīca (café).

What English speakers need to adjust

In English a noun keeps its shape whatever it does in the sentence; the word order alone tells you who does what. In Latvian the ending carries that information, so as soon as a noun is not the subject, it usually changes: Students lasa grāmatu - the reader students is nominative, the book grāmatu is accusative. Learn new nouns in the nominative, but expect to see them in other forms most of the time.

Addressing someone directly uses the vocative, which for many names is the nominative without its ending: Jāni, nāc šurp! - Jānis, come here!