Northern Sami

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Northern Sami davvisámegiella
Spoken in:	Norway, Sweden, Finland
Total speakers:	15,000-25,000 (estimated)
Language family:	Uralic Finno-Ugric Finno-Permic Finno-Volgaic Finno-Lappic Sami Western Northern Sami
Writing system:	Latin alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	`se`
ISO 639-2:	`sme`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`sme`
Image:Sami languages large.png
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Northern or North Sami (also written Sámi or Saami; formerly Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. It can be divided into a three major dialect groups: Torne, Finnmark and Sea Sami. 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.

1 Grammar
2 Phonology
3 Syntax
4 Writing system
5 References
6 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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:

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).

[edit] 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

[edit] Verbs

[edit] Person

Northern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

[edit] Mood

Northern Sami has 4 grammatical moods:

[edit] Grammatical number

Northern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

[edit] Tense

Northern Sami has 2 simple tenses:

and 2 compound tenses:

[edit] Verbal nouns

[edit] 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.

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Syntax

Northern Sami is an SVO language.

[edit] Writing system

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
/ɑ/	/a/	/b/	/ts/	/tʃ/	/d/	/ð/	/e/	/f/	/ɡ/
H h	I i	J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	Ŋ ŋ	O o	P p
/h/	/i/	/j/	/k/	/l/	/m/	/n/	/ŋ/	/o/	/p/
R r	S s	Š š	T t	Ŧ ŧ	U u	V v	Z z	Ž ž
/r/	/s/	/ʃ/	/t/	/θ/	/u/	/v/	/dz/	/dʒ/

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.

[edit] References

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Northern Sami edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia