Recent distribution of the Sami languages: 1. Southern Sami, 2. Ume Sami, 3. Pite Sami, 4. Lule Sami, 5. Northern Sami, 6. Inari Sami, 7. Skolt Sami, 8. Kildin Sami, 9. Ter Sami. Striped areas are multilingual or overlapping.
Sámi languages (/ˈsɑːmi/SAH-mee),[4] in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Indigenous Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, depending on the nature and terms of division, ten or more Sami languages. Several spellings have been used for the Sámi languages, including Sámi, Sami, Saami, Saame, Sámic, Samic and Saamic, as well as the exonymsLappish and Lappic. The last two, along with the term Lapp, are now often considered pejorative.[5]
The Sámi languages form a branch of the Uralic language family. According to the traditional view, Sámi is within the Uralic family most closely related to the 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 is not as strongly supported as had been earlier assumed,[6] and that the similarities may stem from an areal influence on Sámi from Finnic.
In terms of internal relationships, the Sámi languages are traditionally divided into the two groups of western and eastern. The groups may be further divided into various subgroups and ultimately individual languages. (Sammallahti 1998: 6-38.) Recently it has been proposed on the basis of (1) different sound substitutions seen between the Sámi languages in the Proto-Scandinavian loanwords and (2) historical phonology that the first unit to branch off from Late Proto-Sámi was Southern Proto-Sámi, from which descend South Sámi, Ume Sámi, and Gävle Sámi (extinct during the 19th century).[7][8]
Parts of the Sámi language area form a dialect continuum in which the neighbouring languages may be mutually intelligible to a fair degree, but two more widely separated groups will not understand each other's speech. There are, however, some sharp 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. The evolution of sharp language boundaries seems to suggest a relative isolation of the language speakers from each other and not very intensive contacts between the respective speakers in the past. There is some significance in this, as the geographical barriers between the respective speakers are no different from those in other parts of the Sámi area.
This map shows the geographic distribution of Sámi languages and offers some additional information, such as number of native Sámi speakers and locations of the Sámi parliaments.[18]Administrative living areas and municipalities that recognise Sámi as an official language in the Nordic CountriesSami languages and settlements in Russia:
The Sami languages are spoken in SápmiinNorthern 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. The borders between the languages do not align with the ones separating the region's modern states.
During the Middle Ages and early modern period, 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 Karelianoral 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; Aikio, 2007). These Sami languages, however, became extinct later, under the wave of the Finno-Karelian agricultural expansion.
The Proto-Samic language is believed to have formed in the vicinity of the Gulf of Finland between 1000 BC to 700 AD, deriving from a common Proto-Sami-Finnic language (M. Korhonen 1981).[19] However, reconstruction of any basic proto-languages in the Uralic family have reached a level close to or identical to Proto-Uralic (Salminen 1999).[20] According to the comparative linguist Ante Aikio, the Proto-Samic language developed in South Finland or in Karelia around 2000–2500 years ago, spreading then to northern Fennoscandia.[21] The language is believed to have expanded west and north into Fennoscandia during the Nordic Iron Age, reaching central Scandinavia during the Proto-Scandinavian period ca. 500 AD (Bergsland 1996).[22] The language assimilated several strata of unknown Paleo-European languages from the early hunter-gatherers, first during the Proto-Sami phase and second in the subsequent expansion of the language in the west and the north of Fennoscandia that is part of modern Sami today. (Aikio 2004, Aikio 2006).[21][23]
Written languages and sociolinguistic situation[edit]
At present there are nine living Sami languages. Eight of the languages have independent literary languages; the other one has no written standard, and of it, there are only a few, mainly elderly, speakers left. The ISO 639-2 code for all Sami languages without their own code is "smi". The eight 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.[citation needed]ISO 639-1/ISO 639-2: se/sme
The other Sami languages are critically endangered (moribund, have very few speakers left) or extinct. Ten speakers of Ter Sami were known to be alive in 2004.[26] The last speaker of Akkala Sami is known to have died in December 2003,[27] and the eleventh attested variety, Kemi Sami, became extinct in the 19th century. An additional Sami language, Kainuu Sami, became extinct in the 18th century, and probably belonged to the Eastern group like Kemi Sami, although the evidence for the language is limited.
The use of Ææ and Øø in Norway vs. Ää and Öö in Sweden merely reflects the orthographic standards used in the Norwegian and Swedish alphabets, respectively, not differences in pronunciations.
Sámi languages tend to prefer the N-form eng for the uppercase letter.
The capital letter Ŋ (eng) is commonly presented in Sámi languages using the "N-form" variant based the usual Latin uppercase N with a hook added.[28] Unicode assigns code point U+014A to the uppercase eng, but does not prescribe the form of the glyph.[29]
The Skolt Sámi standard uses ʹ (U+02B9) as a soft sign,[30] but other apostrophes, such as ' (U+0027), ˊ (U+02CA) or ´ (U+00B4), are also sometimes used in published texts.
The Kildin Sámi orthography uses the Russian Cyrillic script with these additional letters: А̄а̄ Ӓӓ Е̄е̄ Ё̄ё̄ Һһ/ʼ Ӣӣ Јј/Ҋҋ Ӆӆ Ӎӎ Ӊӊ Ӈӈ О̄о̄ Ҏҏ Ӯӯ Ҍҍ Э̄э̄ Ӭӭ Ю̄ю̄ Я̄я̄
In December 2023, Apple has provided on-screen keyboards for all eight Sámi languages still spoken (with iOS and iPadOS releases 17.2), thus enabling Sámi speakers to use their language on iPhones and iPads without restrictions or difficulties.[31]
A quadrilingual street sign in Inari in (from top to bottom) Finnish, Northern Saami, Inari Saami, and Skolt Saami. Inari is the only municipality in Finland with 4 official languages.Sami speakers in Finland 1980-2010.
InFinland, the Sami language act of 1991 granted the Northern, Inari, and Skolt Sami the right to use their languages for all government services. The Sami Language Act of 2003 (Northern Sami: Sámi giellaláhka; Inari Sami: Säämi kielâlaahâ; Skolt Sami: Sääʹmǩiõll-lääʹǩǩ; Finnish: Saamen kielilaki; Swedish: Samisk språklag) made Sami an official language in Enontekiö, Inari, Sodankylä and Utsjokimunicipalities. Some documents, such as specific legislation, are translated into these Sami languages, but knowledge of any of these Sami languages among officials is not common. As the major language in the region is Finnish, Sami speakers are essentially always bilingual with Finnish. Language nest daycares have been set up for teaching the languages to children. In education, Northern Sami, and to a more limited degree, Inari and Skolt Sami, can be studied at primary and secondary levels, both as a mothertongue (for native speakers) and as a foreign language (for non-native speakers).
^T. Salminen: Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies. — Лингвистический беспредел: сборник статей к 70-летию А. И. Кузнецовой. Москва: Издательство Московского университета, 2002. 44–55. AND [1]
^Korhonen, Mikko 1981: Johdatus lapin kielen historiaan. Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia ; 370. Helsinki, 1981
^: Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies. — Лингвистический беспредел: сборник статей к 70-летию А. И. Кузнецовой. Москва: Издательство Московского университета, 2002. 44–55.
^ abAikio, Ante (2004). "An essay on substrate studies and the origin of Saami". In Hyvärinen, Irma; Kallio, Petri; Korhonen, Jarmo (eds.). Etymologie, Entlehnungen und Entwicklungen: Festschrift für Jorma Koivulehto zum 70. Geburtstag. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki. Vol. 63. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. pp. 5–34.
^Knut Bergsland: Bidrag til sydsamenes historie, Senter for Samiske Studier Universitet i Tromsø 1996
^Aikio, A. (2006). On Germanic-Saami contacts and Saami prehistory. Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 91: 9–55.
^According to researcher Joshua Wilbur and Pite Sami dictionary committee leader Nils Henrik Bengtsson, March 2010.
Itkonen, T. I. 1947. Lapparnas förekomst i Finland. – Ymer: 43–57. Stockholm.
Koponen, Eino 1996. Lappische Lehnwörter im Finnischen und Karelischen. – Lars Gunnar Larsson (ed.), Lapponica et Uralica. 100 Jahre finnisch-ugrischer Unterricht an der Universität Uppsala. Studia Uralica Uppsaliensia 26: 83–98.
Saarikivi, Janne 2004. Über das saamische Substratnamengut in Nordrußland und Finnland. – Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen 58: 162–234. Helsinki: Société Finno-Ougrienne.
