Northern Sami

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Northern Sami

Northern or North Sami (Davvisámegiella, formerly Davvisámi or Davvisaami; improperly Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages

Sami languages

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....
. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
and Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland , is a Nordic countries situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland....
as well as northwestern parts of Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
. The number of Northern Sami speakers is estimated to be somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000. About 2000 of these live in Finland and between 5000 and 6000 in Sweden.

History
Northern Sámi was first described by Knud Leem

Knud Leem

Knud Leem was a Norwegian priest and linguist. Knud Leem started the linguistic study of S?mi when he published a grammar book of it in 1748. Between 1756 and 1768, he also published two dictionaries....
(En lappisk Grammatica efter den Dialect, som bruges af Field-Lapperne udi Porsanger-Fiorden) in 1748 and in dictionaries in 1752 and 1768.

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Encyclopedia

Northern or North Sami (Davvisámegiella, formerly Davvisámi or Davvisaami; improperly Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages

Sami languages

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
, Sweden

Sweden

Finland

Russia

History

Northern Sámi was first described by Knud Leem

Knud Leem

Anders Porsanger

Anders Porsanger was a Sami people linguist from Olderfjorden in Porsanger. He is known for having worked with J?nos Sajnovics in order to establish both the Sami language and Hungarian language languages when J?nos Sajnovics was in Vard? observing the Venus transit in 1769....
, who studied at the Trondheim Cathedral School and other schools, but who was unable to publish his work on Sámi due to racist attitudes at the time. Unfortunately, the majority of his work has disappeared.

The roots of the current orthography for Northern Sámi were laid by Rasmus Rask who, after discussions with Nils Vibe Stockfleth, published Ræsonneret lappisk sproglære efter den sprogart, som bruges af fjældlapperne i Porsangerfjorden i Finmarken. En omarbejdelse af Prof. Knud Leems Lappiske grammatica in 1832. Rask felt that the orthography should be based on the principle of one sound — one letter. All of the orthographies that have been used for Northern Sámi trace their roots back to Rask's system, unlike the orthographies used for Lule

Lule Sami

Lule Sami is a Finno-Ugric languages, Sami languages language spoken in Lule Lappmark, i.e., around Lule? Sweden and in the province of Nordland in Norway....
and Southern Sámi

Southern Sami

Southern Sami is the south-westernmost of the Sami languages. It is a seriously endangered language; the last strongholds of this language are the municipalities of Sn?sa and Hattfjelldal in Norway....
, which are mainly based on the orthographical conventions of Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
and Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic languages language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. It is also spoken as a second language among Norwegian-Americans in the United States of America, especially in the central northern states....
. Following in the tradition of Rask meant that diacritics were used with some consonants (c, d, ?, š, t and ž), which caused data-processing problems before Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
was introduced. Both Stockfleth and J.A. Friis went on to publish grammar books and dictionaries for Sámi. It can be said that Northern Sámi was better described than Norwegian was before Ivar Aasen

Ivar Aasen

Ivar Andreas Aasen was a Norway philologist, lexicographer, playwright and poet.Aasen was born at ?sen in ?rsta , in the district of Sunnm?re, on the west coast of Norway....
published his grammar on Norwegian.

Northern Sámi was and is still used in three separate countries, each of which used its own orthography for a number of years. Friis' orthography was used when work on translating the Bible into Northern Sámi commenced, in the first Sámi newspaper called Sagai Muittalægje

Sagai Muittalægje

Sagai Muittal?gje was a Sami languages newspaper that was published from 1904 to 1911, for a total of 33 issues. The newspaper was founded by Anders Larsen....
, and in the Finnemisjonens own newspaper Nuorttanaste
Nuorttanaste

Nuorttanaste is a religious publication from Norway published in Northern Sami. The first time it appeared in print was in 1898, when it was published once a month....
. The groundwork for Northern Sámi lexicography was laid by Konrad Nielsen who used an orthography of his own creation in his dictionary Lappisk ordbok. Starting in 1948, the orthographies used in Norway and Sweden were combined into a single orthography entitled the Bergsland-Ruong orthography. This orthography, however, was not greatly used in Norway. In addition, the authorities there instituted a policy that prohibited Sámi from being used in practice. !--Både mobiliseringa rundt Alta-saka og eit meir tolerant politisk klima førte til ei endring i den norske assimileringspolitikken dei siste tiåra av 1900-talet.--> In Norway, Northern Sámi is currently the official language of two counties (Finnmark
Finnmark

or Finnm?rku is a Counties of Norway in the extreme northeast of Norway. By land it borders Troms county to the west, Finland to the south and Russia to the east, and by water, the Norwegian Sea to the northwest, and the Barents Sea to the north and northeast....
and Troms
Troms

or Romsa is a Counties of Norway in North Norway, bordering Finnmark to the northeast and Nordland in the southwest. To the south is Norrbotten L?n in Sweden and further southeast is a shorter border with Lapland Province in Finland....
) and six municipalities (Kautokeino
Kautokeino

or Guovdageaidnu , is a Municipalities of Norway in Finnmark Counties of Norway, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino....
, Karasjok
Karasjok

K?r?johka or is a village and Municipalities of Norway in Finnmark Counties of Norway, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Karasjok....
, Nesseby, Tana, Porsanger
Porsanger

Porsanger or Pors??gu or Porsanki is a Municipalities of Norway in Finnmark Counties of Norway, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Lakselv....
and Gáivuotna (Kåfjord). Sámi born before 1977 have never learned to write Sámi according to the currently used orthography in school, so it is only in recent years that there have been Sámi capable of writing their own language for various administrative positions.

Phonology

Stress

Zero stress can be said to be a feature of conjunctions
Conjunctions

conjunctions are words that connect diffreces and simmilar things to one and an otherConjunctions editorial approach is often collaborative. Both the editor and the distinguished staff of active contributing editors — including Walter Abish, Chinua Achebe, John Ashbery, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Mary Caponegro, Robert Creeley, Elizabeth Fra...
, postpositions, particles
Grammatical particle

A particle, in grammar, is a function word that is not assignable to any of the traditional grammatical word classes . The term is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of elements and lacks a precise universal definition....
and monosyllabic pronouns.

Syntax

Northern Sami is an SVO language.

Orthography

Northern Sami has a long orthographic
Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
history, which has witnessed no less than 9 different extended versions of the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
. The most recent version was approved in 1979 and last modified in 1985:

A a Á á
A

The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is a ; the plural is aes or, more commonly, a's....
B b C c C c
C

C or c is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate , and is equivalent to the voiceless postalveolar affricate, , or the voiceless retroflex affricate, ...
D d Ð
D with stroke

? is a letter of the Latin alphabet first used in the South Slavic languages. The glyph for d with stroke is formed from D with the addition of a bar through the letter....
đ E e F f G g
a á be ce ce de de e eff ge
H h I i J j K k L l M m N n ? ?
?

or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....
O o P p
ho i je ko ell emm enn e?? o pe
R r S s Š š
Š

The grapheme ?, ? is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar fricative , including in phonetic transcription....
T t T t
T

T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled tee . It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language....
U u V v Z z Ž ž
Ž

The grapheme ? is formed from Latin Z with the addition of h?cek. It is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiced postalveolar fricative , including phonetic transcription....
err ess eš te te u ve ez ež

An acute accent was placed over the corresponding Latin
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
letter to represent the letters particular to Northern Sámi (Áá Cc Ðd ?? Šš Tt Žž) when typing when there was no way of entering these letters correctly otherwise. These substitutions are still found in books printed after the common orthography was adopted due to system limitations when typing.

Until the official orthography currently in use was adopted in 1979, each country had had its own, slightly different standard, so it is quite possible to come across older books that are difficult to understand for people unacquainted with the orthography:

(The children have come to school.)

The first sentence is from Antti Outakoski's Samekiela kielloahpa from 1950; the second is how it would be written according to the current orthography.

Dialects

Northern Sámi can be divided into four major dialect groups: Torne, East Finnmark, West Finnmark (written standard) and Sea Sami.

Grammar

Northern Sami is an agglutinative, highly inflected language that shares many grammatic features with the other Uralic languages
Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language families of 39 languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian language, Finnish language, Estonian language, Mari language and Udmurt language....
. Sami has also developed considerably into the direction of fusional and inflected morphology, much like Estonian
Estonian language

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various ?migr? communities....
to which it is distantly related. Therefore, morphemes are marked not only by suffixes but also by morphophonological
Morphophonology

Morphophonology is a branch of linguistics which studies:*The phonology structure of morpheme.*The combinatory phonic modifications of morphemes which happen when they are combined...
modifications to the root. Of the various morphophonological alterations, the most important and complex is the system of consonant gradation
Consonant gradation

Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternation between various "grades". It is found in some Finno-Lappic languages such as Finnish language, Estonian language and Sami language, as well as in the Samoyed languages language Nganasan language....
.

Cases

Northern Sami has 7 cases
Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
in the singular, although the genitive and accusative are the same, so some people might state that it only has 6 cases:

Nominative
Genitive
Accusative
Locative
Illative
Comitative
Essive

The form taken by the essive (marker
Marker (linguistics)

In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished....
: -n) is the same in the singular
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and in the plural
Plural

Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers....
, i.e., mánnán (as a child/as children).

Pronouns

The personal pronouns have three numbers - singular, plural and dual
Dual (grammatical number)

Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun....
. The following table contains personal pronouns in the nominative and genitive/accusative cases.

English nominative English genitive
First person (singular) I mun my mu
Second person (singular) you (thou) don your, yours du
Third person (singular) he, she son his, her su
First person (dual) we (two) moai our munno
Second person (dual) you (two) doai your dudno
Third person (dual) they (two) soai theirs sudno
First person (plural) we mii our min
Second person (plural) you dii your din
Third person (plural) they sii their sin

The next table demonstrates the declension of a personal pronoun he/she (no gender distinction) in various cases:

Singular Dual Plural
Nominative son soai sii
Genitive-Accusative su sudno sin
Locative sus sudnos sis
Illative sutnje sudnuide sidjiide
Comitative suinna sudnuin singuin
Essive sunin sudnon sinin

Verbs

Person

Northern Sami verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
s conjugate for three grammatical person
Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
s:

first person
second person
third person

Mood

Northern Sami has 4 grammatical mood
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
s:

indicative
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
imperative
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
conditional
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
potential
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...

Grammatical number

Northern Sami verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
s conjugate for three grammatical number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
s:

singular
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
dual
plural
Plural

Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers....

Tense

Northern Sami has 2 simple tenses
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
:

past
Preterite

The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place in the past. It is similar to the aorist in languages such as Greek language....
non-past
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....

and 2 compound tenses
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
:

perfect
pluperfect
Pluperfect tense

The pluperfect tense , also called past perfect in English language, is a perfective grammatical tense that exists in most Indo-European languages, used to refer to an event that has been completed before another past action....

Verbal nouns

Negative verb

Northern Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb
Negative verb

A negative verb is a type of auxiliary verb with help of which negative forms of verbs are formed. The action itself has no personal endings, while the negative verb takes the inflection....
that conjugates according to mood
Grammatical mood

Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
(indicative, imperative and optative), person
Grammatical person

Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
(1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
(singular, dual and plural).

Ind. pres. Imperative Optative Supinum? sg. du. pl. sg. du. pl. sg. du. pl. sg. du. pl. 1 in ean eat 1 - - - 1 allon allu allot 1 aman amame amamet 2 it eahppi ehpet 2 ale alli allet 2 ale alli allet 2 amat amade amadet 3 ii eaba eai 3 - - - 3 allos alloska alloset 3 amas amaska amaset

The negative verb in Northern Sami does not conjugate according to tense
Grammatical tense

Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
.

External links

A Northern Sámi-English vocabulary (5211 words in Sámi as of 13 March 2007)
(requires a password nowadays)

(has sound files)