Skolt Sámi
Skolt Sámi is a Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300 speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi and approximately 20–30 speakers of the italic=no dialect in an area surrounding Lake Notozero in Russia. In Norway, there are fewer than 15 that can speak Skolt Sámi ; furthermore, the language is largely spoken in the Neiden area. It is written using a modified Roman orthography which was made official in 1973.
The term Skolt was coined by representatives of the majority culture and has negative connotation which can be compared to the term Lapp. Nevertheless, it is used in cultural and linguistic studies. In 2024, Venke Törmänen, the leader of an NGO called Norrõs Skoltesamene, wrote in Ságat, a Sámi newspaper, saying that the term "Eastern Sámi" should not be used to refer to the Skolt Sámi.
History
On Finnish territory Skolt Sámi was spoken in four villages before the Second World War. In Petsamo, Skolt Sámi was spoken in Suonikylä and the village of Petsamo. This area was ceded to Russia in the Second World War, and the Skolts were evacuated to the villages of Nellim, Näätämö and Sevettijärvi in the Inari municipality.On the Russian side the dialect was spoken in the now defunct Sámi settlements of Motovsky, Songelsky, Notozero. Some speakers still may live in the villages of Tuloma and Lovozero.
In Norwegian territory, Skolt Sámi was spoken in the Sør-Varanger area with a cultural centre in the village of Neiden. The language is not spoken as mother tongue anymore in Norway.
Status
Finland
In Finland, Skolt Sámi is spoken by approximately 300 or 400 people. According to Finland's Sámi Language Act, Skolt Sámi is one of the three Sámi languages that the Sámi can use when conducting official business in Lapland. It is an official language in the municipality of Inari, and elementary schools there offer courses in the language, both for native speakers and for students learning it as a foreign language. Only a small number of youths learn the language and continue to use it actively. Skolt Sámi is thus a seriously endangered language, even more seriously than Inari Sámi, which has a nearly equal number of speakers and is even spoken in the same municipality. In addition, there are a lot of Skolts living outside of this area, particularly in the capital region.Use
Media
From 1978 to 1986, the Skolts had a quarterly called italic=no published in their own language. Since 2013, a new magazine called Tuõddri pee′rel has been published once a year.The Finnish news program italic=no featured a Skolt Sámi speaking newsreader for the first time on August 26, 2016. Otherwise Yle italic=no presents individual news stories in Skolt Sámi every now and then. In addition, there have been various TV programs in Skolt Sámi on YLE such as the children's TV series Binnabánnaš.
Religion
The first book published in Skolt Sámi was an Eastern Orthodox prayer book in 1983. Translation of the Gospel of John was published in 1988 and Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom was published in 2002 Skolt Sámi is used together with Finnish in worship of the Lappi Orthodox Parish at churches of Ivalo, Sevettijärvi and Nellim.Music
Like Inari Sámi, Skolt Sámi has recently borne witness to a new phenomenon, namely it is being used in rock songs sung by Tiina Sanila-Aikio, who has published two full-length CDs in Skolt Sámi to date.Education
In 1993, language nest programs for children younger than 7 were created. For quite some time these programs received intermittent funding, resulting in some children being taught Skolt Sámi, while others were not. In spite of all the issues these programs faced, they were crucial in creating the youngest generations of Skolt Sámi speakers. In recent years, these programs have been reinstated.In addition, 2005 was the first time that it was possible to use Skolt Sámi in a Finnish matriculation exam, albeit as a foreign language. In 2012, Ville-Riiko Fofonoff was the first person to use Skolt Sámi for the mother tongue portion of the exam; for this, he won the Skolt of the Year Award the same year.
Writing system
In 1973, an official, standardized orthography for Skolt Sámi was introduced based on the italic=no dialect. Since then, it has been widely accepted with a few small modifications. The Skolt Sámi orthography uses the ISO basic Latin alphabet with the addition of a few special characters:| Letter | Phoneme | Letter | Phoneme | Letter | Phoneme |
| A a | Ǧ ǧ | Õ õ | |||
| Â â | Ǥ ǥ | P p | |||
| B b | H h | R r | |||
| C c | I i | , | S s | ||
| Č č | J j | Š š | |||
| Ʒ ʒ | K k | T t | |||
| Ǯ ǯ | Ǩ ǩ | U u | , | ||
| D d | L l | V v | |||
| Đ đ | M m | Z z | |||
| E e | , | N n | Ž ž | ||
| F f | Ŋ ŋ | Å å | |||
| G g | O o | Ä ä |
Notes:
- The letters Q/q, W/w, X/x, Y/y and Ö/ö are also used, although only in foreign words or loans. As in Finnish and Swedish Ü/ü is alphabetized as y, not u.
- No difference is made in the standard orthography between and. In dictionaries, grammars and other reference works, the letter is used to indicate.
- The diagraphs and indicate the consonants and respectively.
- A prime symbol ′ is added after the vowel of a syllable to indicate suprasegmental palatalization. Occasionally a standalone acute accent ´ or ˊ is used, but this is not correct.
- An apostrophe ʼ is used in the combinations and to indicate that these are two separate sounds, not a single sound. It is also placed between identical consonants to indicate that they belong to separate prosodic feet, and should not be combined into a geminate. It distinguishes e.g. lueʹštted "to set free" from its causative lueʹštʼted "to cause to set free".
- A hyphen – is used in compound words when there are two identical consonants at the juncture between the parts of the compound, e.g. ǩiõtt-tel "mobile phone".
- A vertical line ˈ, typewriter apostrophe or other similar mark indicates that a geminate consonant is long, and the preceding diphthong is short. It is placed between a pair of identical consonants which are always preceded by a diphthong. This mark is not used in normal Skolt Sámi writing, but it appears in dictionaries, grammars and other reference works.
Phonology
Vowels
The system of vowel phonemes is as follows:| front | central | back | |
| close | |||
| close-mid | |||
| open-mid | |||
| open |
Notes:
- The open-mid front unrounded vowel // occurs only in non-palatalized words.
- The vowels // and // occur in some loan words.
The vowels can combine to form twelve opening diphthongs:
| front | front to central | back to front | back to central | back | |
| close to close-mid | |||||
| close to open-mid | |||||
| close to open | |||||
| close-mid to open-mid | |||||
| close-mid to open |
Like the monophthongs, all diphthongs can be short or long, but this is not indicated in spelling. Short diphthongs are distinguished from long ones by both length and stress placement: short diphthongs have a stressed second component, whereas long diphthongs have stress on the first component.
Diphthongs may also have two variants depending on whether they occur in a plain or palatalized environment. This has a clearer effect with diphthongs whose second element is back or central. Certain inflectional forms, including the addition of the palatalizing suprasegmental, also trigger a change in diphthong quality.
| plain | palatalized |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
| italic=no | italic=no |
Consonants
The inventory of consonant phonemes is the following:- Unvoiced stops and affricates are pronounced preaspirated after vowels and sonorant consonants.
- Older speakers realize the palatal affricates as plosives.
- In younger speakers, merges into, into, and into.
- Younger speakers may also lenite into , and into.
- The voiceless velar fricative /x/ has many allophones. It is realized as in word-initial or stress group-initial environments, and as in intervocalic environments. Within palatalized stress groups, /x/ is realized as .
- /f/ appears only in loanwords, but is nonetheless quite common.
- Voiced plosives,, and are not fully voiced, realized as , , and .
- Voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /z/, /ʒ/, /ʝ/, and /ɣ/ are only weakly voiced, and in unstressed syllables may be fully unvoiced.