Skolt Sámi

In Finland, Skolt Sámi is spoken by approximately 400 people. According to Finland's Sámi Language Act (1086/2003), 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.

From 1978 to 1986, the Skolts had a quarterly called Sääʹmođđâz published in their own language.[5] Since 2013, a new magazine called Tuõddri peeʹrel has been published once a year.[6]

The Finnish news program Yle Ođđasat featured a Skolt Sámi speaking newsreader for the first time on August 26, 2016. Otherwise Yle Ođđasat presents individual news stories in Skolt Sámi every now and then.[7] In addition, there have been various TV programs in Skolt Sámi on YLE such as the children's TV series Binnabánnaš.

The first book published in Skolt Sámi was an Eastern Orthodox prayer book (Risttoummi moʹlidvaǩeʹrjj, Prayerbook for the Orthodox) in 1983. Translation of the Gospel of John was published (Evvan evaŋǧeʹlium) in 1988 and Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom (Pââʹss Eʹččen Evvan Krysostomoozz Liturgia, Liturgy of our Holy Father John Chrysostom) was published in 2002 [8] Skolt Sámi is used together with Finnish in worship of the Lappi Orthodox Parish (Lappi ortodookslaž sieʹbrrkåʹdd) at churches of Ivalo, Sevettijärvi and Nellim.[9]

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.

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 (Skolt Sami: Läärvan-Oʹlssi-Peâtt-Rijggu-Vääʹsǩ-Rijggu-Ville-Reeiǥaž) 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.[10]

The system of vowel phonemes is as follows:

Skolt Sámi has vowel length, but it co-occurs with contrasts in length of the following consonant(s). Before a long consonant, vowels are short, while before a short consonant vowels are long (written with a doubled letter). For example, leʹtt ‘vessel’ vs. leeʹtt ‘vessels’.

The vowels can combine to form twelve opening diphthongs:

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.[12]

The inventory of consonant phonemes is the following:

• Unvoiced stops and affricates are pronounced preaspirated after vowels and sonorant consonants.
• Voiced stops and affricates are usually pronounced just weakly voiced.
• Older speakers realize the palatal affricates /c͡ç, ɟ͡ʝ/ as plosives [c, ɟ].
• In initial position, /x/ is realized as glottal [h].

Consonants may be phonemically short or long (geminate) both word-medially or word-finally; both are exceedingly common. Long and short consonants also contrast in consonant clusters, cf. kuõskkâd 'to touch' : kuõskâm 'I touch'. A short period of voicelessness or h, known as preaspiration, before geminate consonants is observed, much as in Icelandic, but this is not marked orthographically, e.g. joʹǩǩe 'to the river' is pronounced [jo̟hk̟k̟e].

There is one phonemic suprasegmental, the palatalizing suprasegmental that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable. In written language the palatalizing suprasegmental is indicated with a free-standing acute accent between a stressed vowel and the following consonant, as follows:

vääʹrr 'mountain, hill' (suprasegmental palatalization present)

cf. väärr 'trip' (no suprasegmental palatalization)

The suprasegmental palatalization has three distinct phonetic effects:

• The stressed vowel is pronounced as slightly more fronted in palatalized syllables than in non-palatalized ones.
• When the palatalizing suprasegmental is present, the following consonant or consonant cluster is pronounced as weakly palatalized. Suprasegmental palatalization is independent of segmental palatals: inherently palatal consonants (i.e. consonants with palatal place of articulation) such as the palatal glide /j/, the palatal nasal /ɲ/ (spelled ⟨nj⟩) and the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/ (spelled ⟨lj⟩) can occur both in non-palatalized and suprasegmentally palatalized syllables.
• If the word form is monosyllabic and ends in a consonant, a non-phonemic weakly voiced or unvoiced vowel is pronounced after the final consonant. This vowel is e-colored if suprasegmental palatalization is present, but a-colored if not.

Skolt Sámi has four different types of stress for words:

• Primary stress
• Secondary stress
• Tertiary stress
• Zero stress

The first syllable of any word is always the primary stressed syllable in Skolt Sámi as Skolt is a fixed-stress language. In words with two or more syllables, the final syllable is quite lightly stressed (tertiary stress) and the remaining syllable, if any, are stressed more heavily than the final syllable, but less than the first syllable (secondary stress).

Using the abessive and the comitative singular in a word appears to disrupt this system, however, in words of more than one syllable. The suffix, as can be expected, has tertiary stress, but the penultimate syllable also has tertiary stress, even though it would be expected to have secondary stress.

Zero stress can be said to be a feature of conjunctions, postpositions, particles and monosyllabic pronouns.

Umlaut is a pervasive phenomenon in Skolt Sámi, whereby the vowel in the second syllable affects the quality of the vowel in the first. The presence or absence of palatalisation can also be considered an umlaut effect, since it is also conditioned by the second-syllable vowel, although it affects the entire syllable rather than the vowel alone. Umlaut is complicated by the fact that many of the second-syllable vowels have disappeared in Skolt Sámi, leaving the umlaut effects as their only trace.

The following table lists the Skolt Sámi outcomes of the Proto-Samic first-syllable vowel, for each second-syllable vowel.

Some notes:

• iẹʹ and uẹʹ appear before a quantity 2 consonant, eäʹ and uäʹ otherwise.

As can be seen, palatalisation is present before original second-syllable *ē and *i, and absent otherwise. Where they survive in Skolt Sámi, both appear as e, so only the umlaut effect can distinguish them. The original short vowels *ë, *u and *i have a general raising and backing effect on the preceding vowel, while the effect of original *ā and *ō is lowering. Original *ē is fronting (palatalising) without having an effect on height.

Skolt Sámi has 9 cases in the singular (7 of which also have a plural form), although the genitive and accusative are often the same.

The following table shows the inflection of čuäcc ('rotten snag') with the single morphemes marking noun stem, number, and case separated by hyphens for better readability. The last morpheme marks for case, i marks the plural, and a is due to epenthesis and does not have a meaning of its own.[13]

Like the other Uralic languages, the nominative singular is unmarked and indicates the subject or a predicate. The nominative plural is also unmarked and always looks the same as the genitive singular.

The genitive singular is unmarked and looks the same as the nominative plural. The genitive plural is marked by an -i. The genitive is used:

• to indicate possession (Tuʹst lij muu ǩeʹrjj. 'You have my book.' where muu is gen.)
• to indicate number, if said the number is between 2 and 6. (Sieʹzzest lij kuõʹhtt põõrt. 'My father's sister (my aunt) has two houses.', where põõrt is gen.)
• with prepositions (rääi + [GEN]: 'by something', 'beyond something')
• with most postpositions. (Sij mõʹnne ääkkäd årra. 'They went to your grandmother's (house).', 'They went to visit your grandmother.', where ääkkäd is gen)

The genitive has been replacing the partitive for some time and is nowadays more commonly used in its place.

The accusative is the direct object case and it is unmarked in the singular. In the plural, its marker is -d, which is preceded by the plural marker -i, making it look the same as the plural illative. The accusative is also used to mark some adjuncts, e.g. obb tääʹlv ('the entire winter').

The locative marker in the singular is -st and -n in the plural. This case is used to indicate:

• where something is (Kuäʹđest lij ǩeʹrjj: 'There is a book in the kota.')
• where it is coming from (Niõđ puõʹtte domoi Čeʹvetjääuʹrest: 'The girls came home from Sevettijärvi.')
• who has possession of something (Suʹst lij čâustõk: 'He/she has a lasso.')

In addition, it is used with certain verbs:

• to ask someone s.t. : kõõččâd [+loc]

The illative marker actually has three different markers in the singular to represent the same case: -a, -e and -u. The plural illative marker is -d, which is preceded by the plural marker -i, making it look the same as the plural accusative. This case is used to indicate:

• where something is going
• who is receiving something
• the indirect object

The comitative marker in the singular is -in and -vuiʹm in the plural. The comitative is used to state with whom or what something was done:

• Njääʹlm sekstet leeiʹnin. The mouth is wiped with a piece of cloth.
• Vuõʹlǧǧem paaʹrnivuiʹm ceerkvest. I left church with the children.
• Vuõʹlǧǧem vueʹbbinan ceerkvest. I left church with my sister.

To form the comitative singular, use the genitive singular form of the word as the root and -in. To form the comitative plural, use the plural genitive root and -vuiʹm.

The abessive marker is -tää in both the singular and the plural. It always has a tertiary stress.

• Vuõʹlǧǧem paaʹrnitää ceerkvest. I left church without the children.
• Sij mõʹnne niõđtää põʹrtte. They went in the house without the girl.
• Sij mõʹnne niõđitää põʹrtte. They went in the house without the girls.

The dual form of the essive is still used with pronouns, but not with nouns and does not appear at all in the plural.

The partitive is only used in the singular and can be replaced by the genitive in most cases. The partitive marker is -d.

1. It appears after numbers larger than six:

• kääuʹc čâustõkkâd: 'eight lassos'

This can be replaced with kääʹuc čâustõõǥǥ.

2. It is also used with certain postpositions:

• kuäʹtte'd vuâstta: 'against a kota'

This can be replaced with kuäʹđ vuâstta

3. It can be used with the comparative to express that which is being compared:

• kåʹlled pueʹrab: 'better than gold'

This would nowadays more than likely be replaced by pueʹrab ko kåʹll

The personal pronouns have three numbers: singular, plural and dual. The following table contains personal pronouns in the nominative and genitive/accusative cases.

The next table demonstrates the declension of a personal pronoun he/she (no gender distinction) in various cases:

Next to number and case, Skolt Sámi nouns also inflect for possession. However, usage of possessive affixes seems to decrease among speakers. The following table shows possessive inflection of the word muõrr ('tree').[14]

Skolt Sámi verbs inflect (inflection of verbs is also referred to as conjugation) for person, mood, number, and tense. A full inflection table of all person-marked forms of the verb kuullâd ('to hear') is given below.[15]

It can be seen that inflection involves changes to the verb stem as well as inflectional suffixes. Changes to the stem are based on verbs being categorized into several inflectional classes.[16] The different inflectional suffixes are based on the categories listed below.

Skolt Sámi verbs conjugate for four grammatical persons:

• first person
• second person
• third person
• fourth person, also called the indefinite person

Skolt Sámi has 5 grammatical moods:

• indicative
• imperative (Pueʹtted sõrgg domoi! 'Come home soon!')
• conditional
• potential
• optative

Skolt Sámi verbs conjugate for two grammatical numbers:

• singular
• plural

Unlike other Sámi varieties, Skolt Sámi verbs do not inflect for dual number. Instead, verbs occurring with the dual personal pronouns appear in the corresponding plural form.

Skolt Sámi has 2 simple tenses:

• past (Puõʹttem škoouʹle jåhtta. 'I came to school yesterday.')
• non-past (Evvan puätt mu årra täʹbbe. 'John is coming to my house today.')

and 2 compound tenses:

• perfect
• pluperfect

The verb forms given above are person-marked, also referred to as finite. In addition to the finite forms, Skolt Sámi verbs have twelve participial and converb forms, as well as the infinitive, which are non-finite. These forms are given in the table below for the verb kuullâd ('to hear').[17]

Skolt Sámi has two auxiliary verbs, one of which is lee´d (glossed as 'to be'), the other one is the negative auxiliary verb (see the following paragraph).

Inflection of lee´d is given below.[18]

Lee'd is used, for example, to assign tense to lexical verbs in the conditional or potential mood which are not marked for tense themselves:

• Jiõm âʹte mon ni kõõjjče, jos mon teâđčem, leʹččem veär raajjâm ouddâl.

(negation (1st P. Sg.) – then – 1st P. Sg. – even – ask (negated conditional) – if – 1st P. Sg. – know (1st P. Sg. conditional) – be (1st P. Sg. conditional) – soup – make (past participle, no tense marking) – before)

'I wouldn't even ask if I knew, if I had made soup before!'[19]

Skolt Sámi, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Skolt Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to mood (indicative, imperative and optative), person (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th) and number (singular and plural).

Note that ij + leat is usually written as iʹlla, iʹlleäkku, iʹllää or iʹllä and ij + leat is usually written as jeäʹla or jeäʹlä.

Unlike the other Sámi languages, Skolt Sámi no longer has separate forms for the dual and plural of the negative verb and uses the plural forms for both instead.

The most frequent word order in simple, declarative sentences in Skolt Sámi is subject–verb–object (SVO). However, as cases are used to mark relations between different noun phrases, and verb forms mark person and number of the subject, Skolt Sámi word order allows for some variation.[20]

An example of an SOV sentence would be:

• Neezzan suâjjkååutid kuårru. (woman (Pl., Nominative) – protection (Sg., Nominative) + skirt (Pl., Accusative) – sew (3rd P. Pl., Past)) 'The women sewed protective skirts.'

Intransitive sentences follow the order subject-verb (SV):

• Jääuʹr kâʹlmme. (lake (Pl., Nominative) – freeze (3rd P. Pl., Present)) 'The lakes freeze.'

An exception to the SOV word order can be found in sentences with an auxiliary verb. While in other languages, an OV word order has been found to correlate with the auxiliary verb coming after the lexical verb,[21] the Skolt Sámi auxiliary verb lee'd ('to be') precedes the lexical verb. This has been related to the verb-second (V2) phenomenon which binds the finite verb to at most the second position of the respective clause. However, in Skolt Sámi, this effect seems to be restricted to clauses with an auxiliary verb.[22]

An example of a sentence with the auxiliary in V2 position:

• Kuuskõõzz leʹjje ääld poorrâm. (northern light (Pl., Nominative) – be (3rd P. Pl., Past) – female reindeer (Sg., Accusative) – eat (Past Participle)) 'The northern lights had eaten the female reindeer.'

In Skolt Sámi, polar questions, also referred to as yes–no questions, are marked in two different ways. Morphologically, an interrogative particle, -a, is added as an affix to the first word of the clause. Syntactically, the element which is in the scope of the question is moved to the beginning of the clause. If this element is the verb, subject and verb are inversed in comparison to the declarative SOV word order.

• Vueʹlǧǧveʹted–a tuäna muu ooudâst eččan ääuʹd ool? (leave (2nd P. Pl., Present, Interrogative) – 2nd P. Dual Nominative – 1st P. Sg. Genitive – behalf – father (Sg. Genitive 1st P. Pl.) – grave (Sg. Genitive) – onto) 'Will the two of you go, on my behalf, to our father's grave?'

If an auxiliary verb is used, this is the one which is moved to the initial sentence position and also takes the interrogative affix.

• Leäk–a ääʹvääm tõn uus? (be (2nd P. Sg., Present, Interrogative) – open (Past Participle) – that (Sg. Accusative) – door (Sg. Accusative)) 'Have you opened that door?'
• Leäk–a ton Jefremoff? (be (2nd P. Sg., Interrogative) – 2nd P. Sg. Nominative – Jefremoff) 'Are you Mr. Jefremoff?'

A negated polar question, using the negative auxiliary verb, shows the same structure:

• Ij–a kõskklumâs villjad puättam? (Negation 3rd P. Sg., Interrogative – middle – brother (Sg. Nominative, 2nd P. Sg.) – come (Past Participle)) 'Didn't your middle brother come?'

An example of the interrogative particle being added to something other than the verb, would be the following:

• Võl–a lie mainnâz? (still (Interrogative) – be (3rd P. Sg., Present) – story (Pl., Nominative)) 'Are there still stories to tell?'[23]

Information questions in Skolt Sámi are formed with a question word in clause-initial position. There also is a gap in the sentence indicating the missing piece of information. This kind of structure is similar to Wh-movement in languages such as English. There are mainly three question words corresponding to the English 'what', 'who', and 'which' (out of two). They inflect for number and case, except for the latter which only has singular forms. It is noteworthy that the illative form of mii ('what') corresponds to the English 'why'. The full inflectional paradigm of all three question words can be found below.[24]

Some examples of information questions using one of the three question words:

• Mâiʹd reäǥǥak? (what (Sg., Accusative) – cry (2nd P. Sg., Present)) 'What are you crying about?'
• Mõõzz pueʹttiǩ? (what (Sg., Illative) – come (2nd P. Sg., Past)) 'Why did you come?'
• Ǩii tuʹst leäi risttjeäʹnn? (who (Sg., Nominative) – 2nd P. Sg., Locative – be (3rd P. Sg., Past) – godmother (Sg., Nominative) 'Who was your godmother?'
• Kuäbbaž alttad heibbad? (which (Sg., Nominative) – begin (3rd P. Sg., Present) – wrestle (Infinitive)) 'Which one of you will begin to wrestle?'

In addition to the above-mentioned, there are other question words which are not inflected, such as the following:

• koʹst: 'where', 'from where'
• koozz: 'to where'
• kuäʹss: 'when'
• mäʹhtt: 'how'
• måkam: 'what kind'

An example sentence would be the following:

• Koozz vuõʹlǧǧiǩ? (to where – leave (2nd P. Sg., Past)) 'Where did you go?'[25]

The Skolt Sámi imperative generally takes a clause-initial position. Out of the five imperative forms (see above), those of the second person are most commonly used.

• Puäʹđ mij årra kuâssa! (come (2nd P. Sg., Imperative) – 1st P. Pl., Genitive – way – on a visit) 'Come and visit us at our place!'

Imperatives in the first person form, which only exist as plurals, are typically used for hortative constructions, that is for encouraging the listener (not) to do something. These imperatives include both the speaker and the listener.

• Äʹlǧǧep heibbad! (start (1st P. Pl., Imperative) – wrestle (Infinitive)) 'Let's start to wrestle!'

Finally, imperatives in the third person are used in jussive constructions, the mood used for orders and commands.

• Kuärŋŋaz sij tieʹrm ool! (climb (3rd P. Pl., Imperative) – 3rd P. Pl., Nominative – hill (Sg., Genitive) – onto) 'Let them climb to the top of the hill!'v329–330}}