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Southern Sami
åarjelsaemien gïele
Spoken in	Norway, Sweden
Total speakers	~500
Language family	Uralic Finno-Ugric Finno-Permic Finno-Volgaic Finno-Lappic Sami Western Southern Sami; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin alphabet
Official status
Official language in	Snåsa
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	sma
ISO 639-3	sma
	Southern Sami is 1 on this map.
	Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

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.

[edit] Writing system

Southern Sami is one of the six Sami 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 Sami-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

An alternative orthography replaces Æ/æ with Ä/ä and Ø/ø with Ö/ö. 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 do not distinguish between the two.

C/c, Q/q, W/w, X/x, Z/z are used in words of foreign origin.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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)

[edit] Consonants

[edit] Grammar

[edit] Sound alterations

A typical feature of Southern Sami is the alternation of first-syllable vowels through Umlaut in the declension and conjugation of words. Often there are three different vowels that alternate 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 does not 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.

[edit] 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 westernmost Sami languages that still differentiate between the accusative and the genitive morphologically.

[edit] Verbs

[edit] Person

Southern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

first person
second person
third person

[edit] Mood

[edit] Tense

[edit] Grammatical number

Southern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

[edit] Negative verb

Southern Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Southern 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). This differs from some other the other Sami languages, e.g., from Northern Sami, which do not conjugate according to tense.

Southern Sami negative verb, indicative forms
	Non-past indicative			Past indicative
	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	im	ean	ibie	idtjim	idtjimen	idtjimh
2nd	ih	idien	idie	idtjih	idtjiden	idtjidh
3rd	ij	eakan	eah	idtji	idtjigan	idtjin

Southern Sami negative verb, imperative forms
	Non-past imperative			Past imperative
	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	aelliem	aellien	aellebe	ollem	ollen	ollebe
2nd	aellieh	aelleden	aellede	ollh	olleden	ollede
3rd	aellis	aellis	aellis	olles	olles	olles

[edit] Syntax

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

[edit] References

Bergsland, Knut. Røroslappisk grammatikk, 1946.
Bergsland, Knut. Sydsamisk grammatikk, 1982.
Bergsland, Knut and Lajla Mattson Magga. Åarjelsaemien-daaroen baakoegærja, 1993.
Hasselbrink, Gustav. Südsamisches Wörterbuch I–III

[edit] External links

Sámi lottit Names of birds found in Sápmi in a number of languages, including Skolt Sámi and English. Search function only works with Finnish input though.
Southern Sámi grammar
Southern Sámi analyzer
Samien Sijte - Southern Sámi Museum and Cultural Center
Sørsamisk forskning og undervisning - Universitetet i Tromsø

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