Southern or South Sámi (, no, sørsamisk, sv, sydsamiska) is the southwesternmost of the

Sámi languages Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, depend ...

, and is spoken in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

and Sweden. It is an endangered language; the strongholds of this language are the municipalities of Snåsa, Røyrvik, Røros (

Trøndelag Trøndelag (; sma, Trööndelage) is a county in the central part of Norway. It was created in 1687, then named Trondhjem County ( no, Trondhjems Amt); in 1804 the county was split into Nord-Trøndelag and Sør-Trøndelag by the King of Denmar ...

, Central Norway) and Hattfjelldal (

Nordland Nordland (; smj, Nordlánnda, sma, Nordlaante, sme, Nordlánda, en, Northland) is a county in Norway in the Northern Norway region, the least populous of all 11 counties, bordering Troms og Finnmark in the north, Trøndelag in the south, ...

Northern Norway Northern Norway ( nb, Nord-Norge, , nn, Nord-Noreg; se, Davvi-Norga) is a geographical region of Norway, consisting of the two northernmost counties Nordland and Troms og Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainland. Some of the la ...

) in

. It is possible to study Southern Sámi at

Nord University Nord University ( no, Nord universitet; sma, Noerhte universitete; smj, Nuortta universitiehtta) is a state university in the Nordland and Trøndelag counties of Norway. The university has 11,000 students at study locations in Northern and Ce ...

in Levanger,

Umeå University Umeå University ( sv, Umeå universitet; Ume Sami language, Ume Sami: ) is a public university, public research university located in Umeå, in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within ...

Umeå Umeå ( , , , locally ; South Westrobothnian: ;). fi, Uumaja; sju, Ubmeje; sma, Upmeje; se, Ubmi) is a city in northeast Sweden. It is the seat of Umeå Municipality and the capital of Västerbotten County. Situated on the Ume River, U ...

, and

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance durin ...

in Uppsala. In 2018, two master's degrees were written in the language at Umeå University. Language courses are also offered in different Sámi language centres throughout the south Sámi area.

Writing system

Southern Sámi is one of the six

that has an official written standard, but only a few books have been published for the language, one of which is an adequate-sized Southern Sámi–Norwegian dictionary. Southern Sámi uses the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

: The Sámi Language Council recommended in 1976 to use ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ö⟩, but in practice the latter is replaced by ⟨ø⟩ in Norway and the former by ⟨ä⟩ in Sweden. This is in accordance with the usage in Norwegian and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, based on computer or typewriter availability. The represents a back version of , however many texts fail to distinguish between the two. , , , , are only used in words of foreign origin.

Phonology

Southern Sámi 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 italics: The non-high vowels , , and 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

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

Consonants

Grammar

Sound alternations

In Southern Sámi, the vowel in the second syllable of a word causes changes to the vowel in the first syllable, a feature called umlaut. The vowel in the second syllable can change depending on the inflectional ending being attached, and the vowel in the first vowel will likewise alternate accordingly. Often there are three different vowels that alternate with each other in the paradigm of a single word, for example as follows: * ~ ~ : 'to walk' : 'I walk' : 'I walked' * ~ ~ : 'to leave' : 'I leave' : 'I left' The following table gives a full overview of the alternations: On the other hand, Southern Sami is the only Sami language that does not have consonant gradation. Hence consonants in the middle of words never alternate in Southern Sami, even though such alternations are frequent in other Sami languages. Compare, for instance, Southern Sami 'name' : 'in the name' to Northern Sami : , with the consonant gradation : .

Cases

Southern Sami has 8 cases:

Verbs

Person

Southern Sámi

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

s conjugate for three

grammatical person In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker (first person), the addressee ( second person), and others ( third per ...

s: *first person *second person *third person

Mood

Tense

Grammatical number

Southern Sámi

s conjugate for three

grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...

s: * singular *

dual Dual or Duals may refer to: Paired/two things * Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another ** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality *** see more cases in :Duality theories * Dual (grammatical ...

plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...

Negative verb

Southern Sámi, 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 Mood may refer to: *Mood (psychology), a relatively long lasting emotional state Music *The Mood, a British pop band from 1981 to 1984 * Mood (band), hip hop artists * ''Mood'' (Jacquees album), 2016 * ''Moods'' (Barbara Mandrell album), 1978 ...

(indicative and imperative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...

(singular, dual and plural). This differs from some other Sámi languages, e.g. from Northern Sámi, which do not conjugate according to tense.

Syntax

Skolt Sámi Skolt Sámi ( , "the Sámi language", or , "the Eastern Sámi language", if a distinction needs to be made between it and the other Sámi languages) is a Uralic, Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300 speakers ...

and unlike other Sámi languages, Southern Sámi is an

SOV language SOV may refer to: * SOV, Service Operations Vessel * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail station ...

References

* Bergsland, Knut. ''Røroslappisk grammatikk'', 1946. * Jussi Ylikoski. ''South Saami'', 2022. * Knut Bergsland. ''Sydsamisk grammatikk'', 1982. * Knut Bergsland and Lajla Mattson Magga. ''Åarjelsaemien-daaroen baakoegærja'', 1993. * Hasselbrink, Gustav. ''Südsamisches Wörterbuch I–III''

External links

The Children's TV series Binnabánnaš in Southern SámiSámi lottit
Names of birds found in

Sápmi (, smj, Sábme / Sámeednam, sma, Saepmie, sju, Sábmie, , , sjd, Са̄мь е̄ммьне, Saam' jiemm'n'e) is the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people. Sápmi is in Northern and Eastern Europe and includes th ...

in a number of languages, including Skolt Sámi and English. Search function only works with Finnish input though.
Southern Sámi grammatical resourcesSamien Sijte
– Southern Sámi Museum and Cultural Center

– Universitetet i Tromsø {{DEFAULTSORT:Southern Sami Language Western Sámi languages Languages of Norway Subject–object–verb languages Languages of Sweden Endangered Uralic languages Endangered languages of Europe