LULE SAMI


'Lule Sami' ''(julevsábme)'' is a Finno-Ugric, Sami language spoken in Lule Lappmark, i.e., around Luleå Sweden and in the province of Nordland in Norway. It is written using an official Roman orthography.

Contents
Status
Grammar
Cases
Nominative
Genitive
Accusative
Inessive
Illative
Elative
Comitative
Pronouns
Verbs
Person
Mood
Grammatical number
Tense
Verbal nouns
Negative verb
Phonology
Stress
Writing system
References
External links

Status


With 1,500 to 2,000 speakers it is the second largest of all Sami languages. It is reported that the number of native speakers is in sharp decline among the younger generations. The language has, however, been standardised in 1983 and elaborately cultivated ever since.

Grammar


Cases

Lule Sámi has 8 cases:
Nominative

Like the other Uralic languages, the nominative singular is unmarked and indicates the subject or a predicate.
The nominative plural is also unmarked and always looks the same as the genitive singular.
Genitive

The ''genitive'' singular is unmarked and looks the same as the nominative plural. The genitive plural is marked by an ''-j''. The genitive is used:

★ to indicate possession

★ with prepositions

★ with postpositions.
Accusative

The accusative is the direct object case and it is marked with ''-v'' in the singular. In the plural, its marker is ''-t'', which is preceded by the plural marker ''-j''.
Inessive

The inessive marker is ''-n'' in the singular and the plural, when it is then preceded by the plural marker ''-j''. This case is used to indicate:

★ where something is

★ who has possession of something
Illative

The illative marker is ''-j'' in the singular and ''-da'' in the plural, which is preceded by the plural marker ''-i'', making it look the same as the plural accusative. This case is used to indicate:

★ where something is going

★ who is receiving something

★ the indirect object
Elative

The elative marker is ''-s'' in the singular and the plural, when it is then preceded by the plural marker ''-j''. This case is used to indicate:

★ where something is coming from
Comitative

The comitative marker in the singular is ''-jn'' and ''-j'' in the plural, which means that it looks like the genitive plural. The comitative is used to state ''with whom or what'' something was done.
Pronouns

The personal pronouns have three numbers - singular, plural and dual. The following table contains personal pronouns in the nominative and genitive/accusative cases.
 EnglishnominativeEnglishgenitive
First person (singular) 'I' mån 'my' muv
Second person (singular) 'you (thou)' dån 'your, yours' duv
Third person (singular) 'he, she' sån 'his, her' suv
First person (dual) 'we (two)' måj 'our' munnu
Second person (dual) 'you (two)' dåj 'your' dunnu
Third person (dual) 'they (two)' såj 'theirs' sunnu
First person (plural) 'we' mij 'our' mijá
Second person (plural) 'you' dij 'your' tijá
Third person (plural) 'they' sij 'their' sijá

The next table demonstrates the declension of a personal pronoun ''he/she'' (no gender distinction) in various cases:
 SingularDualPlural
Nominative sån såj sij
Genitive suv sunnu sijá
Accusative suv sunnuv sijáv
Inessive sujna sunnun sijan
Illative sunji sunnuj sidjij
Elative sujsta sunnus sijas
Comitative sujna sunnujn sijájn

Verbs

Person

Lule Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

★ first person

★ second person

★ third person
Mood

Lule Sami has 4 grammatical moods:

indicative

imperative

conditional

potential
Grammatical number

Lule Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

singular

dual

plural
Tense

Lule Sami verbs has two simple tenses:

past

non-past
and 2 compound tenses:

perfect

pluperfect
Verbal nouns

Negative verb

Lule Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Lule Sami, the negative verb conjugates according to tense (past and non-past), mood (indicative and imperative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural).

Phonology


Stress

Writing system


The orthography used for Lule Sámi is written using an extended form of the Latin alphabet. There are few special characters, only a-acute and n-acute. The character n-acute (Ń/ń) is the eng sound found in the English word "song", . In place of n-acute (found in Unicode, but not in ASCII), many use ñ or even ng.

References



★ Spiik, Nils-Erik: ''Lulesamisk grammatik''

★ Grundström, Harald: ''Lulesamisches Wörterbuch''

★ Kintel, Anders 1991: ''Syntaks og ordavledninger i lulesamisk''. Kautokeino : Samisk utdanningsråd.

★ Wiklund, K.B. 1890: ''Lule-lappisches Wörterbuch''. Helsinki: Suomalais-ugrilaisen seuran toimituksia ; 1

External links



Sámásta Lule Sami lessons and resources (in Swedish)

Morphological analyzer for Lule Sámi

Language generator for Lule Sámi

Lule Sámi grammar in Norwegian(Currently only covers pronouns).

Ådå Testamennta The New Testament in Lule Sámi (PDF)

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