Sami languages: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Sami is a general name for group of Finno-Ugric languages spoken in Laponia, including parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, in Northern Europe. Very often Sami is erroneously referred as one language for all lappic people.

History

There Skolt Samis, which inhabited the Petsamo area, were resettled to the municipality of Inari in Finland after its annexation by the Soviet Union in 1944.

The Sami languages belong to the Finno-Ugric languages group.

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.

Official status

In Finland, the language law of 1992 grants Sami people the right to use the Sami languages for all government services.

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.

Dialects

In 2001 there were around ten known Sami languages. Six of these have a standard written language, the four others are literally not in use – i.e. there are fewer than 100 people that speak them. The six written dialects 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.
• Lule Sami (Norway, Sweden)
  The second largest group with an estimated 1,500 speakers
• Southern Sami (Norway, Sweden)
• Inari Sami (Enare Sami) (Inari, Finland) SIL code: LPI, ISO 639-2: smi
• Skolt Sami (Näätämö and the Nellim-Keväjärvi districts, Inari municipality, Finland, also spoken in Russia, previously in Norway) SIL code: LPK, ISO 639-2: smi
• Kildin Sami (Kildin Island, Russia) SIL code: LPD, ISO 639-2: smi

The remaining living 4 Sami languages have very few speakers and are in danger of extinction. It is believed that they have fewer than 500 speakers combined. They are Akkala (Babino) Sami, Ter Sami, Pite Sami and Ume Sami. Another Sami language, Kemi Sami, has been extinct for over 100 years.

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

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

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

• a-acute (Á/á)
• c-caron (Č/č)
• d-stroke (Đ/đ)
• eng (Ŋ/ŋ)
• s-caron (Š/š)
• t-stroke (Ŧ/ŧ)
• z-caron (Ž/ž)

Lule Sami very few special characters, only a-acute and n-acute. 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.