Sami languages

Sami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken in parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently (and erroneously) believed to be a single language. It is the native tongue of the Sami people. There are several terms used for the Sami languages: Saami, Sámi, Samic, Saamic, Lappish and Lappic. The last two are, along with the term Lapp, considered derogatory by some.

Classification

The Sami languages are divided into two groups: the western and the eastern ones. The groups may be further divided into various subgroups and ultimately individual languages. Parts of the Sami language area form a dialect continuum in which the neighbouring languages may be to fair degree mutually intelligible, but two more widely separated groups will not understand each others' speech. There are, however, sharp and absolute language boundaries, in particular between Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami, the speakers of which are not able to understand each other without learning or long practice.

Western Sami languages

Eastern Sami languages

Geographic distribution

The Sami languages are spoken by the Sami people living in Lapland in Northern Europe. The Lapland region stretches over the four countries Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, reaching from the southern part of central Scandinavia in the southwest to the tip of the Kola Peninsula in the east.

During the Middle and Early Modern Ages now extinct Sami languages have also been spoken in the central and southern parts of Finland and Karelia. Historical documents as well as Finnish and Karelian oral tradition contain many mentions of the earlier Sami inhabitation in these areas. Place names of Sami origin are widespread in Finland, Karelia, Norway and Sweden.

Official status

Adopted in April 1988, Article 110a of the Norwegian Constitution states: "It is the responsibility of the authorities of the State to create conditions enabling the Sami people to preserve and develop its language, culture and way of life." The Sami Language Act went into effect in the 1990s. Sami is an official language of the municipalities of Kautokeino, Karasjok, Kåfjord, Nesseby, Sør-Varanger and Tana.

In Finland, the Sami language act of 1991 granted Sami people the right to use the Sami languages for all government services. The Sami language act of 2003 made Sami an official language in Enontekiö, Inari, Sodankylä and Utsjoki municipalities.

On April 1, 2002 Sami became one of five recognized minority languages in Sweden. It can be used in dealing with public authorities in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Gällivare, Jokkmokk and Kiruna.

See also: Sami parliaments of Finland, Norway, and Sweden

Languages and dialects

In 2001 there were ten known Sami languages. The largest six of these have standard written languages; the four others are not written, and there are likely fewer than 20 people speaking them. The ISO 639-2 code for all Sami languages without its proper code is "smi". The six written languages are:

Northern Sami (Norway, Sweden, Finland): With an estimated 15,000 speakers, this accounts for probably more than 75% of all Sami speakers in 2002. ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2: se/sme
Lule Sami (Norway, Sweden): The second largest group with an estimated 1,500 speakers. ISO 639-2: smj
Southern Sami (Norway, Sweden): ISO 639-2: sma
Inari Sami (Enare Sami) (Inari, Finland): SIL code: LPI, ISO 639-2: smn
Skolt Sami (Näätämö and the Nellim-Keväjärvi districts, Inari municipality, Finland, also spoken in Russia, previously in Norway) SIL code: LPK, ISO 639-2: sms
Kildin Sami (Kildin Island, Russia) SIL code: LPD

The remaining living languages are Ter Sami, Pite Sami and Ume Sami, which have very few (likely under 20) speakers left. Akkala (Babino) Sami is known to have had one living speaker still in 2002, but now the language is probably extinct. Another Sami language, Kemi Sami, has been extinct for over 100 years.

Orthography

The Northern Sami language has had more than one orthography, but in 1948 a common orthography was created. It was last modified in 1985.

Northern Sami uses seven characters not found in the Scandinavian languages or the Finnish language:

a-acute (Á/á) (front vowel; notice the contrast between the back vowel and the front vowel )
c-caron (Č/č)
d-stroke (Đ/đ)
engma (Ŋ/ŋ)
s-caron (Š/š)
t-stroke (Ŧ/ŧ)
z-caron (Ž/ž)

The Lule Sami language has a common orthography but with fewer special characters, only a-acute and n-acute. The character n-acute (Ń/ń) is the eng sound found in the English word "song". Instead of n-acute (found in Unicode, but not in ASCII), many use ñ or even ng.

Southern Sami uses written using Norwegian or Swedish characters, some variants of Swedish (ä, ö) or Norwegian (æ, ø) characters. Inari Sami uses seven special characters. Kildin Sami uses Cyrillic typesetting, Russian characters with some special characters.

Skolt Sami uses a Latin orthography, with the following special characters:

circumflex-A (Â/â)
a-ring (Å/å)
a-trema (Ä/ä)
o-tilde (Õ/õ)
ezh (Ʒ/ʒ)
ezh-caron (Ǯ/ǯ)
s-caron (Š/š)
z-caron (Ž/ž)
c-caron (Č/č)
g-caron (Ǧ/ǧ),
k-caron (Ǩ/ǩ)
d-stroke (Đ/đ)
g-stroke (Ǥ/ǥ)
engma (Ŋ/ŋ)

External links