Skolt Sámi (, , ; or , , ) is a Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300K.H. "Språket bare en person snakker" [The language that only one person speaks]. 29 December 2020. Klassekampen. P. 29 "knapt 300 igjen som kan, som [...] Veikku Feodoroff fortalte til Klassekampen tidligere i år" [barely 300 left that can, as [...] Veikku Feodoroff told Klassekampen earlier this year] speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi and approximately 20–30 speakers of the (Notozero) dialect in an area surrounding Lake Notozero in Russia. In Norway, there are fewer than 15 that can speak Skolt Sámi ();Ole Magnus Rapp. 2023-11-06. Klassekampen. P.24 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" ("østsame" in Norwegian) 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 (then Soviet) side the dialect was spoken in the now defunct Sámi settlements of Motovsky, Songelsky, Notozero (hence its Russian name – the Notozersky dialect). Some speakers still may live in the villages of Tuloma and Lovozero. Some speakers of "creole" dialects, such as "Gorra" exist in other areas of Russia, with limited surviving vocabulary, living in various communities within Karelia; due to significant influence and use of Russian these creole speakers are not considered speakers of Skolt Sami.
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 (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.
Use Media From 1978 to 1986, the Skolts had a quarterly called published in their own language. Since 2013, a new magazine called Tuõddri peeʹrel has been published once a year.
The Finnish news program featured a Skolt Sámi speaking newsreader for the first time on August 26, 2016. Otherwise Yle 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 .
Religion The first book published in Skolt Sámi was an Eastern Orthodox prayer book (, Prayerbook for the Orthodox) in 1983. Translation of the Gospel of John was published () in 1988 and Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom (, Liturgy of our Holy Father 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 seven 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 dialect. Since then, it has been widely accepted with a few small modifications. Other examples of Skolt Sami written in Cyrillic script exist in an unofficial capacity. Currently no standardized cyrllic script exists for Skolt Sami. The Skolt Sámi orthography uses the ISO basic Latin alphabet with the addition of a few special characters:
Letter Phoneme(s)LetterPhoneme(s)LetterPhoneme(s) A a Ǧ ǧÕ õ Â â Ǥ ǥP p B b H hR r C c I i, S s Č č J jŠ š Ʒ ʒ K kT t Ǯ ǯ Ǩ ǩU u, D d L lV v Đ đ M mZ z E e , N nŽ ž F f Ŋ ŋÅ å G g O oÄ 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.
Additional marks are used in writing Skolt Sámi words: A prime symbol ʹ (U+02B9 MODIFIER LETTER PRIME) is added after the vowel of a syllable to indicate suprasegmental palatalization. Occasionally a standalone acute accent ´ or ˊ (U+00B4 ACUTE ACCENT or U+02CA MODIFIER LETTER ACUTE ACCENT) is used, but this is not correct. An apostrophe ʼ (U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE) 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. "to set free" from its causative "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. "mobile phone". A vertical line ˈ (U+02C8 MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE), 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 Special features of this Sámi language include a highly complex vowel system and a suprasegmental contrast of palatalized vs. non-palatalized stress groups; palatalized stress groups are indicated by a "softener mark", represented by the ʹ character.
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 [] does not have phonemic status. The vowels // and // occur in some loan words.
Skolt Sámi has vowel length, but it co-occurs with contrasts in length of the following consonant(s). For example, 'vessel' vs. 'vessels'.
The vowels can combine to form eight phonemic opening diphthongs (with additional diphthongs being allophones of these eight):
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.
plainpalatalized
Consonants The inventory of consonant phonemes is the following:
Labial Dental / Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Nasal Plosive /affricate Fricative () Trill Approximant 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 [h] 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 [b̥], [d̥], and [g̥]. Voiced fricatives /v/, /ð/, /z/, /ʒ/, /ʝ/, and /ɣ/ are only weakly voiced, and in unstressed syllables may be fully unvoiced.
Consonants may be phonemically short or long (geminate) both word-medially or word-finally; both are exceedingly common. Similarly to other Sámic languages, there exists a three-way contrast between weak, strong, and overlong consonants (In some reference works, these are referred to as weak, strong, and strong+, or transcribed as C, Cː, and CːC). Overlong consonants do not occur word-finally. Long and short consonants also contrast in consonant clusters, cf. 'to touch' : '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. 'to the river' is pronounced .
Suprasegmentals
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:
[va̘ːrʲːe̥] 'mountain, hill' (suprasegmental palatalization present) [vaːrːḁ] '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 , the palatal nasal (spelled ) and the palatal lateral approximant (spelled ) 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.
Stress
Skolt Sámi has four different levels of stress for words: Primary stress Secondary stress Tertiary stress Zero stress