NORTHERN SAMI

'Northern' or 'North Sami' ('Davvisápmi', formerly 'Davvisámi' or 'Davvisaami'; improperly 'Lappish' or 'Lapp') is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. The number of Northern Sami speakers is estimated to be somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000.

Contents

History

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Stress

Syntax

Orthography

Dialects

Grammar

Cases

Pronouns

Verbs

Person

Mood

Grammatical number

Tense

Verbal nouns

Negative verb

References

History

Northern Sámi was first described by Knud Leem (''En lappisk Grammatica efter den Dialect, som bruges af Field-Lapperne udi Porsanger-Fiorden'') in 1748 and in dictionaries in 1752 and 1768. One of Leem's fellow grammaticians was Anders Porsanger, 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 and Southern Sámi, which are mainly based on the orthographical conventions of Swedish and Norwegian. Following in the tradition of Rask meant that diacritics were used with some consonants (č, đ, ŋ, š, ŧ and ž), which caused data-processing problems before Unicode 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 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 Saǥai Muittalægje, and in the ''Finnemisjonen's own newspaper Nuorttanaste. 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. In 1979, an official orthography for Northern Sámi was adopted for use in Norway, Sweden and Finland.
In Norway, Northern Sámi is currently the official language of two counties (Finnmark and Troms) and six municipalities (Kautokeino, Karasjok, Nesseby, Tana, Porsanger and 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

Vowels

Consonants

Stress

Zero stress can be said to be a feature of conjunctions, postpositions, particles and monosyllabic pronouns.

Syntax

Northern Sami is an SVO language.

Orthography

The Northern Sami language has had more than one orthography, but in 1979 a common orthography was created. It was last modified in 1985.
Northern Sami is written in an extended version of the Latin alphabet.

A a	Á á	B b	C c	Č č	D d	Đ đ	E e	F f	G g
a	á	be	ce	če	de	đe	e	eff	ge
H h	I i	J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	Ŋ ŋ	O o	P p
ho	i	je	ko	ell	emm	enn	eŋŋ	o	pe
R r	S s	Š š	T t	Ŧ ŧ	U u	V v	Z z	Ž ž
err	ess	eš	te	ŧe	u	ve	ez	ež

In some older publications, Ć/ć, Ś/ś, and Ź/ź may be found as variants for Č/č, Š/š, and Ž/ž, respectively.
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:
1. ''Maanat leät poahtan skuvllai.''
2. ''Mánát leat boahtán skuvllai.''
(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 three major dialect groups: 'Torne', 'Finnmark' and 'Sea Sami'.

Grammar

Northern Sami is an agglutinative, highly inflected language that shares many grammatic features with the other Uralic languages. Sami has also developed considerably into the direction of fusional and inflected morphology, much like Estonian to which it is distantly related. Therefore, morphemes are marked not only by suffixes but also by morphophonological modifications to the root. Of the various morphophonological alterations, the most important and complex is the system of consonant gradation.

Cases

Northern Sami has 7 cases 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: ''-n'') is the same in the singular and in the plural, i.e., ''mánnán'' (as a child/as children).

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'	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 verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

★ first person

★ second person

★ third person

Mood

Northern Sami has 4 grammatical moods:

★ indicative

★ imperative

★ conditional

★ potential

Grammatical number

Northern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

★ singular

★ dual

★ plural

Tense

Northern Sami has 2 simple tenses:

★ past

★ non-past
and 2 compound tenses:

★ perfect

★ pluperfect

Verbal nouns

Negative verb

Northern Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb that conjugates according to mood (indicative, imperative and optative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (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.

References

★ Kimberli Mäkäräinen A Northern Sámi-English vocabulary (5211 words in Sámi as of 13 March 2007)

★ Northern Sámi - Inari Sámi - Skolt Sámi - English dictionary (requires a password nowadays)

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

★ Sámi language technology project

★ Sámi dictionary and terminology database

★ Sámi proofing tools project

★ Sátnemeahccái project for children

★ Gradation described

★ Wordlist with sound files

★ Gulahalan, a course on North Sámi in Swedish (has sound files)

★ Irja Seurujärvi-Kari talks in Northern Sámi