![Åarjel-saemiej skuvle Snåsa](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/%C3%85arjel-saemiej_skuvle_Sn%C3%A5sa.jpg)
Southern or South Sámi (, no, sørsamisk, sv, sydsamiska) is the southwesternmost of the
Sámi languages
Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, dependin ...
, and is spoken in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
and
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
. It is an endangered language; the strongholds of this language are the municipalities of
Snåsa
Snåsa (; sma, Snåase) is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the Innherred region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Snåsa. Other villages include Agle and Jørstad.
Snåsa is one of th ...
,
Røyrvik
Røyrvik ( sma, Raarvihke, sv, Röyrvik) is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the Namdalen region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Røyrvik. The area has always had a strong Sami influen ...
,
Røros
Røros ( sma, Plaassja, ) is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Røros. Some of the villages in Røros include Brekken, Glåmos, Feragen, Galåa, and Hitterdalen.
The minin ...
(
Trøndelag
Trøndelag (; sma, Trööndelage) is a county in the central part of Norway. It was created in 1687, then named Trondhjem County ( no, Trondhjems Amt); in 1804 the county was split into Nord-Trøndelag and Sør-Trøndelag by the King of Denmar ...
,
Central Norway
Central Norway ( nb, Midt-Norge, nn, Midt-Noreg) is an informal region of Norway that is not clearly defined. The term ''Central Norway'' may in its most limited usage refer only to Trøndelag county, but may also be understood to include all or ...
) and
Hattfjelldal
Hattfjelldal ( sma, Aarborte) is a municipality in Nordland county, Norway. It is part of the Helgeland traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Hattfjelldal. Other villages include Grubben, Svens ...
(
Nordland
Nordland (; smj, Nordlánnda, sma, Nordlaante, sme, Nordlánda, en, Northland) is a county in Norway in the Northern Norway region, the least populous of all 11 counties, bordering Troms og Finnmark in the north, Trøndelag in the south, N ...
,
Northern Norway
Northern Norway ( nb, Nord-Norge, , nn, Nord-Noreg; se, Davvi-Norga) is a geographical Regions of Norway, region of Norway, consisting of the two northernmost counties Nordland and Troms og Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainlan ...
) in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
.
It is possible to study Southern Sámi at
Nord University
Nord University ( no, Nord universitet; sma, Noerhte universitete; smj, Nuortta universitiehtta) is a state university in the Nordland and Trøndelag counties of Norway. The university has 11,000 students at study locations in Northern and Cent ...
in
Levanger
Levanger is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the district of Innherred. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Levanger. Some of the notable villages in the municipality include Alstadhaug, Ekne ...
,
Umeå University
Umeå University ( sv, Umeå universitet; Ume Sami: ) is a public research university located in Umeå, in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within Sweden's present borders.
As of 2015 ...
in
Umeå
Umeå ( , , , locally ; South Westrobothnian: ;). fi, Uumaja; sju, Ubmeje; sma, Upmeje; se, Ubmi) is a city in northeast Sweden. It is the seat of Umeå Municipality and the capital of Västerbotten County.
Situated on the Ume River, U ...
, and
Uppsala University
Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in opera ...
in Uppsala. In 2018, two master's degrees were written in the language at Umeå University. Language courses are also offered in different Sámi language centres throughout the south Sámi area.
Writing system
Southern Sámi is one of the six
Sámi languages
Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, dependin ...
that has an official written standard, but only a few books have been published for the language, one of which is an adequate-sized Southern Sámi–Norwegian dictionary.
Southern Sámi uses the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
:
The Sámi Language Council recommended in 1976 to use ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ö⟩, but in practice the latter is replaced by ⟨ø⟩ in Norway and the former by ⟨ä⟩ in Sweden.
This is in accordance with the usage in
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, based on computer or typewriter availability. The represents a back version of , however many texts fail to distinguish between the two.
, , , , are only used in words of foreign origin.
Phonology
Southern Sámi has two dialects, the northern and the southern dialect. The phonological differences between the dialects are relatively small; the phonemic system of the northern dialect is explained below.
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of the northern dialect are the following; orthographic counterparts are given in italics:
The non-high vowels , , and contrast in
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
: they may occur as both short and long. High vowels only occur as short.
The vowels may combine to form ten different
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s:
Consonants
Grammar
Sound alternations
In Southern Sámi, the vowel in the second syllable of a word causes changes to the vowel in the first syllable, a feature called
umlaut. The vowel in the second syllable can change depending on the inflectional ending being attached, and the vowel in the first vowel will likewise alternate accordingly. Often there are three different vowels that alternate with each other in the paradigm of a single word, for example as follows:
* ~ ~ : 'to walk' : 'I walk' : 'I walked'
* ~ ~ : 'to leave' : 'I leave' : 'I left'
The following table gives a full overview of the alternations:
On the other hand, Southern Sami is the only Sami language that does not have
consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation betw ...
. Hence consonants in the middle of words never alternate in Southern Sami, even though such alternations are frequent in other Sami languages. Compare, for instance, Southern Sami 'name' : 'in the name' to
Northern Sami
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a ...
: , with the consonant gradation : .
Cases
Southern Sami has 8
cases:
Verbs
Person
Southern Sámi
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s conjugate for three
grammatical person
In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others (third pers ...
s:
*first person
*second person
*third person
Mood
Tense
Grammatical number
Southern Sámi
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s conjugate for three
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
s:
*
singular
Singular may refer to:
* Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms
* Singular homology
* SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS)
* Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
*
dual
*
plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
Negative verb
Southern Sámi, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages, and Estonian, has a
negative verb
Dryer defined three different types of negative markers in language. Beside negative particles and negative affixes, negative verbs play a role in various languages. The negative verb is used to implement a clausal negation. The negative predic ...
. In Southern Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to
tense (past and non-past),
mood (indicative and imperative),
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
(1st, 2nd and 3rd) and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
(singular, dual and plural). This differs from some other Sámi languages, e.g. from
Northern Sámi, which do not conjugate according to
tense.
Syntax
Like
Skolt Sámi
Skolt Sámi ( , "the Sámi language", or , "the Eastern Sámi language", if a distinction needs to be made between it and the other Sámi languages) is a Uralic, Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300 speakers in ...
and unlike other Sámi languages, Southern Sámi is an
SOV language.
References
*
Bergsland, Knut. ''Røroslappisk grammatikk'', 1946.
* Jussi Ylikoski. ''South Saami'', 2022.
* Knut Bergsland. ''Sydsamisk grammatikk'', 1982.
* Knut Bergsland and Lajla Mattson Magga. ''Åarjelsaemien-daaroen baakoegærja'', 1993.
* Hasselbrink, Gustav. ''Südsamisches Wörterbuch I–III''
External links
The Children's TV series Binnabánnaš in Southern SámiSámi lottitNames of birds found in
Sápmi
(, smj, Sábme / Sámeednam, sma, Saepmie, sju, Sábmie, , , sjd, Са̄мь е̄ммьне, Saam' jiemm'n'e) is the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people. Sápmi is in Northern and Eastern Europe and includes the ...
in a number of languages, including Skolt Sámi and English. Search function only works with Finnish input though.
Southern Sámi grammatical resourcesSamien Sijte– Southern Sámi Museum and Cultural Center
– Universitetet i Tromsø
{{DEFAULTSORT:Southern Sami Language
Western Sámi languages
Languages of Norway
Subject–object–verb languages
Languages of Sweden
Endangered Uralic languages
Endangered languages of Europe