Sami languages Totally Explained

Everything about Sami Languages totally explained

Sami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently (and erroneously) believed to be a single language. Several names are 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 form a branch of the Uralic language family. According to the traditional view, Sami is within the Uralic family most closely related to the Baltic-Finnic languages (Sammallahti 1998). However, this view has recently been doubted by some scholars, who argue that the traditional view of a common Finno-Sami protolanguage isn't as strongly supported as has been earlier assumed (External Link

), and that the similarities may stem from an areal influence on Sami from Baltic-Finnic.
In terms of internal relationships, 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. (Sammallahti 1998: 6-38.) Parts of the Sami language area form a dialect continuum in which the neighbouring languages may be to a fair degree mutually intelligible, but two more widely separated groups won't 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

Inari Sami

Kemi Sami (extinct)

Skolt Sami

Akkala Sami (extinct)

Kildin Sami

Ter Sami

Geographic distribution

The Sami languages are spoken in Sápmi in Northern Europe, in a region stretching 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 Ages and Early Modern Age now extinct Sami languages were also spoken in the central and southern parts of Finland and Karelia and in a wider area on the Scandinavian peninsula. Historical documents as well as Finnish and Karelian oral tradition contain many mentions of the earlier Sami inhabitation in these areas (Itkonen 1947). Also loanwords as well as place-names of Sami origin in the southern dialects of Finnish and Karelian dialects testify of earlier Sami presence in the area (Koponen 1996; Saarikivi 2004). These Sami languages, however, became later extinct under the wave of the Finno-Karelian agricultural expansion.

History

In recent linguistics research it has been revealed that there's a large substratum lexicon in the Sami languages in certain semantic fields related to topographical nouns, the biological world and cultural items and concepts, possibly attributable to the lost languages of the first hunter-gatherer ancestors of the Sami in northern Fennoscandia It has been suggested that the language shift from Paleo-European to Proto-Sami happened no earlier than the iron age and was completed no later than 500 AC. It isn't known if the earlier language was related to the Uralic languages, and so far no support has been found for this. Therefore, there's reason to believe that there has been a considerable cultural continuity throughout the language shift (Aikio 2004, Aikio 2006).

Written languages and sociolinguistic situation

At present there are nine living Sami languages. The largest six of the languages have independent literary languages; the three others have no written standard, and there are only few, mainly elderly speakers left. 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): 500 speakers (estimated). ISO 639-2: sma

Inari Sami (Enare Sami) (Inari, Finland): 500 speakers (estimated). 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): 400 speakers (estimated). SIL code: LPK, ISO 639-2: sms

Kildin Sami (Kola Peninsula, Russia): 650 speakers (estimated). SIL code: LPD The other Sami languages are moribund and have very few speakers left.. Ten speakers of Ter Sami were known to be alive in 2004, and Pite Sami and Ume Sami likely have under 20 speakers left. The last speaker of Akkala Sami is known to have died in December 2003, and the eleventh attested variety Kemi Sami became extinct in the 19th century.

Orthographies

The Sámi languages use an extended version of the Latin alphabet. � Note that the letter Đ is a capital D with a bar across it (Unicode U+0110) and isn't the capital eth (Ð; U+00D0) found in Icelandic, Faroese or Old English, which it's almost identical to.
   Note also that the extra characters used by the Southern Sámi in Norway have the same sound as Southern Sámi in Sweden.
   Kildin Sámi uses an extended version of the Cyrillic alphabet: Аа Ӓӓ Бб Вв Гг Дд Ее Ёё Жж Зз Ии Йй Ӣӣ Кк Лл Ӆӆ Мм Ӎӎ Нн Ӊӊ Ӈӈ Оо Пп Рр Ҏҏ Сс Тт Уу Фф Хх Цц Чч Шш Щщ Ъъ Ыы Ьь Ҍҍ Ээ Ӭӭ Юю Яя Јј Ѣѣ ʼ. It also uses macrons, which are difficult to show on the Internet due to technical restrictions.
   Skolt Sámi uses ˊ (U+02CA) as a soft sign; due to technical restrictions, it's often replaced by ´ (U+00B4).

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, Porsanger, Tana, Tysfjord, and Snåsa. 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

Further Information

Get more info on 'Sami Languages'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://sami_languages.totallyexplained.com">Sami languages Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.