Inari Sami language

Inari Sámi (anarâškielâ) is a Sami language spoken by the Inari Sami of Finland. It has approximately 300 speakers, the majority of whom are middle-aged or older and live in the municipality of Inari. According to the Sami Parliament of Finland, 269 persons used Inari Sami as their first language. It is the only Sami language that is spoken exclusively in Finland.^[1] The language is classified as being seriously endangered as few children learn it.

History

Edvard Wilhelm Borg's Anar sämi kiela aapis kirje ja doctor Martti Lutherus Ucca katkismus

The first book in Inari Sámi was Anar sämi kiela aapis kirje ja doctor Martti Lutherus Ucca katkismus, which was written and translated by Edvard Wilhelm Borg in 1859. The written history of modern Inari Sámi, however, is said to begin with Lauri Arvid Itkonen's translation of the history of the Bible in 1906, although he had already translated some other books into Inari Sámi (Martin Luther and John Charles Ryles). After that, Inari Sami was mainly published in books written by linguists, Frans Äimä and Erkki Itkonen, in particular. For many years, very little literature was written in Inari Sami, although Sämitigge has funded and published a lot of books, etc., in recent years.

Since 1992, Finland's Sami have had the right to interact with officials in their own language in areas where they have traditionally lived: Enontekiö, Utsjoki, Inari and the northern part of Sodankylä as official policy favors the conservation of the language. All announcements in Inari, which is the only officially quadrilingual municipality in Finland, must be made in Finnish, North Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami. Only about 10% of the public servants in the area, however, can serve the Inari Saami-speaking population in Inari Saami, so Finnish is used by the remaining 90%.

In 1986, the Anarâškielâ servi (Inari Sámi Language Association) was founded to promote the language and its use. The association publishes numerous books, textbooks, a calendar, etc., in Inari Sami. They have established a language immersion program in 1997 for 3- to 6-year-old children in a day care in Inari and Ivalo. In 2007, the association started publishing an Inari Sámi newspaper called Kierâš online.

A new phenomenon see Inari Sami is being used in rap songs by Mikkal Morottaja, whose stage name is Amoc. Morottaja published the first full-length Inari Sámi rap CD in the world on February 6, 2007 (Sami National Day).

Geographic distribution

Along with Finnish, Skolt Sami and Northern Sami, Inari Sámi is one of the four official languages in the municipality of Inari, in particular in the following villages^[4] located on the shore of Lake Inari (the Inari Sámi name for the village is enclosed in parentheses):

• Nellim (Njellim)
• Ivalo (Avveel)
• Menesjärvi (Menišjävri)
• Repojoki (Riemâšjuuhâ)
• Tirro (Mosshâš)
• the village of Inari (Aanaar markkân)
• Kaamanen (Kaamâs)
• Aksujärvi (Ákšujävri)
• Syysjärvi (Čovčjävri)
• Iijärvi (Ijjävri)
• Sevettijärvi (Čevetjävri)
• Partakko (Päärtih)

Orthography

Inari Sámi is written using the Latin script. The alphabet currently used for Inari Sami was made official in 1996 and stands as follows:

The phonetic values are the same as in Karelian, and đ represents the voiced dental fricative (in English "the"). Q/q, W/w, X/x, Å/å, Ö/ö are also used in words of foreign origin. Á was traditionally pronounced in the middle of a and ä, but in modern Inari Sámi the distinction between á and ä is nonexistent. In writing, Á and ä are nevertheless considered separate characters. Ä is used in:

• the first syllable of a word, when there is an e or i in a second syllable of the same word,
• a word of only one syllable (although á is also used), or
• the diphthong iä (but not in the diphthong uá).

Grammar

Cases

Inari Sámi has nine cases, although the genitive and accusative are often the same:

• Nominative
• Genitive
• Accusative
• Locative
• Illative
• Comitative
• Abessive
• Essive
• Partitive

The partitive appears to be a highly unproductive case in that it seems to only be used in the singular. In addition, unlike Finnish, Inari Sámi does not make use of the partitive case for objects of transitive verbs. Thus "Mun puurâm leeibi" could translate into Finnish as either "Minä syön leivän" (English: I'm eating (all of) the bread) or "Minä syön leipää" (I'm eating (some) bread, or generally, I eat bread); this telicity contrast is mandatory in Finnish.

Pronouns

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 I/we (dual)/we (plural) in the various cases:

Verbs

Person

Inari Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

• first person
• second person
• third person

Mood

Inari Sami has five grammatical moods:

• indicative
• imperative
• conditional
• potential
• optative

Grammatical number

Inari Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

• singular
• dual
• plural

Tense

Inari Sami has two simple tenses:

• past
• non-past

and two compound tenses:

• perfect
• Pluperfect

Negative verb

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

    Ind. pres.                  Imperative                Optative
    sg.      du      pl.        sg.    du      pl.        sg.      du      pl.
1   jie'm    iän     ep      1  –      –       –       1  iällum iäl'loon  iällup
2   jie'h    eppee   eppeđ   2  ele    ellee   elleđ   2  ele    ellee     elleđ   
3   ij       iä'vá   iä      3  –      –       –       3  iä'lus iällus    iällus

References

General

External links

Inari Sami language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Brief history of Inari Sámi
• Salminen, Tapani. UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages. 1993.
• Kimberli Mäkäräinen A minute vocabulary (Inari Sámi-English) (233 words)
• Names of birds found in Sápmi in a number of languages, including Skolt Sámi and English. Search function only works with Finnish input though.
• Inari Saami language resources at Giellatekno
• Clip about keeping Inari Sami alive (requires RealPlayer)
• The Inari Sami Language by Toivonen and Nelson
• Hans Morottaja speaks about himself, etc. in Inari Sámi

Languages of Finland
Official languages	Finnish Swedish
Minority languages	Karelian Romani Finnish Kalo Sami Northern Inari Skolt Tatar Mishar Tatar
Sign languages	Finnish Sign Language Finland-Swedish Sign Language