Southern Sami
| Southern Sami | |
|---|---|
| Åarjelsaemien gïele | |
| Region | Norway, Sweden |
|
Native speakers
|
(600 cited 1992) |
| Latin | |
| Official status | |
|
Official language in
|
Snåsa, Norway |
|
Recognised minority
language in |
Norway; Sweden
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | sout2674 |
Southern Sami is 1 on this map.
|
|
Southern Sami (Åarjelsaemien gïele) is the southwestern-most of the Sami languages. It is a seriously endangered language; the strongholds of this language are the municipalities of Snåsa, Røyrvik, Røros and Hattfjelldal in Norway.
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 script: 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, based on computer or typewriter availability. 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.
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.
The vowel phonemes of the northern dialect are the following; orthographic counterparts are given in italics:
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.
3Long /ɛː/ is written ae.
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