Southern Sami Totally Explained

Everything about Southern Sami totally explained

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 Snåsa and Hattfjelldal in Norway. There are approximately 2000 people considered ethnically Southern Sami in Norway and Sweden, but only approximately 500 of them can fluently speak the language.

Writing system

Southern Sámi is one of the six Sámi languages that has an official written language, but only a few books have been published for the language, one of which is a good-size Southern Sámi-Norwegian dictionary.
   Southern Sami uses the latin alphabet: A/a, B/b, D/d, E/e, F/f, G/g, H/h, I/i, (Ï/ï), J/j, K/k, L/l, M/m, N/n, O/o, P/p, R/r, S/s, T/t, U/u, V/v, Y/y, Æ/æ, Ø/ø, Å/å
   Ä/ä is a variant of Æ/æ, Ö/ö is a variant of Ø/ø. The variants Ä/ä, Ö/ö are used in Sweden, Æ/æ, Ø/ø in Norway, in accordance with the usage in Swedish and Norwegian. The Ï/ï represents a back version of I/i, many texts don't distinguish between the two.
   C/c, Q/q, W/w, X/x, Z/z are used in words of foreign origin.

Phonology

Southern Sami 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 brackets:

	front		central		back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
close	i (i)	y (y)	ɨ (ï/i)¹	ʉ (u)		u (o)
mid	e (e)					o (å)
open	ɛ (æ/ä)²				ɑ (a)

¹The distinction between the vowels i and ɨ is normally not indicated in spelling: both of these sounds are written with the letter i. However, dictionaries and other linguistically precise sources use the character ï for the latter vowel. ²The letter æ is used in Norway, and ä in Sweden.
The non-high vowels e, ɛ, o and a contrast in length: they may occur as both short and long. High vowels only occur as short.
The vowels may combine to form ten different diphthongs:

	front	front to back	central to back	central to front	back	back to front
close to mid	ie (ie)	yo (yø/yö)		ʉe (ue), ɨe (ie/ïe)	uo (oe)
close to open			ʉa (ua)
close						oe (øø/öö)
mid to open	eæ (ea)				oa (åa)	oæ (åe)

Consonants

Grammar

Sound alterations

A typical feature of Southern Sami is the alteration of first-syllable vowels through Umlaut in the declension and conjugation of words. Often there are three different vowels that alterate with each other in the paradigm of a single word, for example as follows:

ae ~ aa ~ ee: vaedtsedh 'to walk' : vaadtsam 'I walk' : veedtsim 'I walked'
ue ~ ua ~ øø: vuelkedh 'to leave' : vualkam 'I leave' : vøølkim 'I left'

On the other hand, Southern Sami is the only Sami language that doesn't have consonant gradation. Hence consonants in the middle of words never alterate in Southern Sami, even though such alterations are frequent in other Sami languages. Compare, for instance, Southern Sami nomme 'name' : nommesne 'in the name' to Northern Sami namma : namas, with the consonant gradation mm : m.

Cases

Southern Sámi has 8 cases:

Case	Singular ending	Plural ending
Nominative	-	-h
Genitive	-n	-i / -j
Accusative	-m	-jte / -ite / -idie
Inessive	-sne / -snie	-ine / -jne / -inie
Elative	-ste / -stie	-jste / -jstie
Illative	-n / -se / -sse	-jte / -ite / -idie
Comitative	-ine / -jne / -inie	-igujmie / -jgujmie
Essive	-ine / -jne / -inie	(no plural form)

Southern Sámi is one of the few Sámi languages that still differentiates between the accusative and the genitive morphologically.

Verbs

Person

Southern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

first person

second person

third person

Mood

Tense

Grammatical number

Southern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

singular

dual

plural

Negative verb

Southern Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Southern Sámi, 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). This differs from some other the other Sami languages, for example, from Northern Sami, which don't conjugate according to tense.

	Non-past indicative	Past indicative
	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st		ean	ibie	idtjim	idtjimen	idtjimh
2nd		idien	idie	idtjih	idtjiden	idtjidh
3rd		eakan	eah	idtji	idtjigan	idtjin

	Non-past imperative	Past imperative
	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st		aellien	aellebe	ollem	ollen	ollebe
2nd		aelleden	aellede	ollh	olleden	ollede
3rd		aellis	aellis	olles	olles	olles

Syntax

Unlike the other Sámi languages, Southern Sámi is an SOV language.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Southern Sami'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://southern_sami.totallyexplained.com">Southern Sami Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.