INARI SAMI

'Inari Sámi' (''anarâškielâ'') is a Finno-Ugric, Sami language spoken in Finland by some 300-400 people, the majority of which are middle-aged or older and live in the municipality of Inari. It is the only Sami language that is spoken exclusively in Finland. The language is classified as being seriously endangered as few children learn the language.

Contents

History

Orthography

Grammar

Cases

Pronouns

Verbs

Person

Mood

Grammatical number

Tense

Verbal nouns

Negative verb

References

Links

History

The first book in Inari Sámi was ''Anar sämi kiela aapis kirje ja doctor Martti Lutherus Ucca katkismus'', which was written and translated by Edvard Wilhelm Borg in 1859. The written history of modern Inari Sámi, however, is said to begin with Lauri Arvid Itkonen's translation of the history of the Bible in 1906, although he had already translated some other books into Inari Sámi before that (Martin Luther and John Charles Ryles). After that, Inari Sami was mainly published in books written by linguists, Frans Äimä and Erkki Itkonen, in particular. For many years, very little literature was written in Inari Sami, although Sämitigge has funded and published a lot of books, etc., in recent years.
Since 1992, Finland's Sami have had the right to interact with officials in their own language in areas where they have traditionally lived: in Enontekiö, Utsjoki, Inari and the northern part of Sodankylä as official policy favors the conservation of the language. All announcements in Inari, which is the only officially quadrilingual municipality in Finland, must be made in Finnish, North Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami. Only about 10% of the public servants in the area, however, can actually serve the Inari Saami-speaking population in Inari Saami, so Finnish is used by the remaining 90%.
In 1986, the Anarâškielâ Servi (Inari Sámi Association) was founded in order to promote the language and its use. The association also publishes a lot of books, textbooks, a calendar, etc., in Inari Sami. They have also established a language immersion program in 1997 for 3-6-year-old children in a day care in Inari and Ivalo.
A new phenomenon has been the fact that Inari Sami is currently being used in rap songs by Mikkal Morottaja, whose stage name is Amoc. Morottaja has also published the first full-length Inari Sámi rap CD in the world on February 6, 2007 (Sami National Day).

Orthography

Inari Sámi is written using an extended version of the Latin alphabet. The alphabet currently used for Inari Sami was made official in 1996 and stands as follows:
A/a, (Â/â), B/b, C/c, Č/č, D/d, Đ/đ, E/e, F/f, G/g, H/h, I/i, J/j, K/k, L/l, M/m, N/n, O/o, P/p, R/r, S/s, Š/š, T/t, U/u, V/v, Y/y, Z/z, Ž/ž, Ä/ä, (Á/á).
The phonetic values are the same as in Karelian, and đ represents the voiced dental fricative (in English "the"). Q/q, W/w, X/x, Å/å, Ö/ö are also used in words of foreign origin. Á is traditionally pronounced in the middle of /a/ and /ä/, but in modern Inari Sámi the difference between á and ä is nonexistent. In text, Á and ä are nevertheless considered as separate characters. Ä is used only, if
1) it is in a first syllable of a word, and there is an "e" or "i" in a second syllable of the same word,
2) it is in a word, which does have only one syllable (although á is also used), or
3) it is a part of diphthong "iä".
Ä however is not used, if it is supposed to be a part of diphthong "uá" (uá and uä are pronounced almost the same, but only uá is correct).

Grammar

Cases

Inari Sámi has 9 cases, although the genitive and accusative are often the same:

★ Nominative

★ Genitive

★ Accusative

★ Locative

★ Illative

★ Comitative

★ Abessive

★ Essive

★ Partitive
The partitive appears to be a highly unproductive case in that it appears to only be used in the singular. In addition, unlike Finnish, Inari Sámi does not make use of the partitive case for objects of transitive verbs. Thus "Mun puurâm leeibi" could translate into Finnish as either "Minä syön leivän" (English: "I eat the bread") or "Minä syön leipää" ("I eat some bread" or generally "I eat bread").

Pronouns

The personal pronouns have three numbers - singular, plural and dual. The following table contains personal pronouns in the nominative and genitive/accusative cases.

	English	nominative	English	genitive
First person (singular)	'I'	mun	'my'	muu
Second person (singular)	'you (thou)'	tun	'your, yours'	tuu
Third person (singular)	'he, she'	sun	'his, her'	suu
First person (dual)	'we (two)'	muoi	'our'	munnuu
Second person (dual)	'you (two)'	tuoi	'your'	tunnuu
Third person (dual)	'they (two)'	suoi	'theirs'	sunnuu
First person (plural)	'we'	mij	'our'	mii
Second person (plural)	'you'	tij	'your'	tii
Third person (plural)	'they'	sij	'their'	sii

The next table demonstrates the declension of a personal pronoun ''I/we (dual)/we (plural)'' in the various cases:

	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	mun	muoi	mij
Genitive-Accusative	muu	munnuu	mii
Locative	must, muste	munnust	mist, miste
Illative	munjin	munnui	mijjân
Comitative	muuin, muin	munnuin, munnuuin	miiguim
Abessive	muuttáá	munnuuttáá	miitttáá
Essive	munen	munnun	minen
Partitive	muđe	munnud?	miđe?

Verbs

Person

Inari Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

★ first person

★ second person

★ third person

Mood

Inari Sami has 5 grammatical moods:

★ indicative

★ imperative

★ conditional

★ potential

★ optative

Grammatical number

Inari Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

★ singular

★ dual

★ plural

Tense

Inari Sami has 2 simple tenses:

★ past

★ non-past
and 2 compound tenses:

★ perfect

★ pluperfect

Verbal nouns

Negative verb

Inari Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Inari Sami, the negative verb conjugates according to mood (indicative, imperative and optative), person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural).
Ind. pres. Imperatiiva Optatiiva
sg. du pl. sg. du pl. sg. du pl.
1 jie'm ián ep 1 - - 1 iällum iäl'loon iällup
2 jie'h eppee eppeđ 2 ele ellee elleđ 2 ele ellee elleđ
3 ij iä'vá iä 3 - - 3 iä'lus iällus iällus

References

★ Itkonen, Erkki. ''Inarilappisches Wörterbuch.'' Lexica societatis fenno-ugricae: 20. Suomalais-ugrilainen seura. Helsinki. ISBN 951-9019-94-4.

★ Sammallahti, Pekka. Morottaja, Matti. ''Säämi-suoma sänikirje. Inarinsaamelais-suomalainen sanakirja.'' Girjegiisá. Ykkösoffset Oy, Vaasa 1993. ISBN 951-8939-27-6.

★ Olthuis, Marja-Liisa. ''Kielâoppâ.'' [Inari] : Sämitigge, 2000.

★ Østmo, Kari. ''Sämikielâ vieres kiellân vuáðuškoovlâst.'' Helsinki : Valtion painatuskeskus, 1988.

Links

★ Salminen, Tapani. ''UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages.'' 1993.

★ Kimberli Mäkäräinen A minute vocabulary (Inari Sámi-English) (233 words)

★ Names of birds found in Sápmi in a number of languages, including Skolt Sámi and English. Search function only works with Finnish input though.

★ Clip about keeping Inari Sami alive (requires RealPlayer)

★ The Inari Sami Language by Toivonen and Nelson

★ Hans Morottaja speaks about himself, etc. in Inari Sámi