Talk:Sami languages

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Contents

[edit] Cheremiss and Votyak

QUOTE: Languages from the Finno-Ugric languages group, spoken by the Saami people of Lapland. Two of which are Cheremiss Votyak /QUOTE Sorry, guys Cheremis is another name for Mari language and Votyak - another name for Udmurt language. They are NOT Saami languges for sure. I am deleting this paragraph.


[edit] Saami Languages

Would Saami languages be more a more suitable name for this article than Saami language? Crusadeonilliteracy 18:58, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Indeed. I redirected Sami Language to Sami Languages.--Kulkuri 13:31, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Sami place names

User:Node has been adding "native american" names to articles on north american places (cities, states, etc). I think it would be very useful to add Sami names to places in northern Scandinavia. I don't know any Sami languages, so I can't help, but I did find a page with a large list of places with "official" and Sami names.

Particularly important are the places where the Swedish / Norwegian etc name has been derived from the Sami name, or when the Sami name is widely used. In those cases, it would be appropriate to mention the Sami name close to the introduction. Example:

Luleå (from Lule sami, Luleju), ...

If the name is not widely used, it may not be appropriate to include it in the introduction. It is then better to add a paragraph talking about the Sami names for the area.

Anyway, this was my idea. Do with it what you will.

- David Remahl 10:38, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Grammar vs orthography

The Northern Sami dialect has had more than one grammar, but in 1948 a common grammar was created. It was last modified in 1985.

The Lule Sami dialect has a common grammar but with fewer special characters, only a-acute and n-acute. The character n-acute (Ń/ń) is the eng sound found in the English word "song". Instead of n-acute (found in Unicode, but not in ASCII), many use ñ or even ng.

Surely, it should be orthography, not grammar?

[edit] Northern Sami open vowels

In the section on Northern Sami's orthography, we find the wonderfully ambiguous utterance:

a-acute (Á/á) /aː/ (front vowel; notice the contrast between the back vowel [ɑ] and the front vowel [æ])

Does this mean we have three phonemes, /æ/=[a̝]-ish, /aː/=[aː] (and not the central [a̠ː] commonly implied by the glyph), /ɑ/=[ɑ]? Or is it saying that /aː/=[æː] and not [ɑː]? Is it saying something entirely different? Unfortunately a brief search with Google was of no help. (If anyone knows anything about the phonology of this language, please add it to Northern Sami language! Something's better than nothing, I'd think!

—Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 11:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geographic Distribution Map

With a bit of effort, someone could make the numbers on the Geographic Distribution correspond to the specific languages mentioned in the article. I'm not that person; I know nothing about the distribution... which is why I'm proposing it. Thanks. --12.119.210.194 20:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

It would also be nice if someone could modify the map such that it did not cut off the easternmost parts of the Kildin and Ter areas.Labongo 16:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Also, the map does not include three Norwegian municipalities that have Sami as an official language. How does on upload images of a correct map/ where can you find out how to upload images a correct map? --Misha bb (talk) 16:47, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Found it out, and uploaded the new image. note to self: search around more before asking others to help you). (talk)Added three municipalities (Snåsa, Tysfjord and Porsanger) and remade the borders of the already existing municipalities to better match the real borders. It's not completely accurate, though, of course.--Misha bb

[edit] Number of speakers

I did some cleaning up, and tagged the speaker statistics of the various languages with fact tags. Does anyone have an idea which sources are the most reliable and up-to-date? There are plenty of references about with speaker statistics, but my impression is that these often just tend to repeat the figures in earlier references, and it is difficult to trace what these are ultimately based on. --AAikio 22:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you think this http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/fu.html could be used? Labongo 13:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regulated by

Are the Sami languages regulated by the Norwegian Sami Parliaments language department (Sámi giellaossodat), formerly known as the Sami language board (Sámi giellaráđđi)? If so, the infobox should be changed. If not, could someone please explain what is required for a language to have an "official regulation"?Labongo 13:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

No, as they are not all contained within Norway. -Yupik 09:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History section

This section is poorly written, doesn't actually address the language history, only the language shift, which is not really relevant to the Sami Languages since these of course are all subsequent to this language shift. Before the shift there were no Sami Languages, rather there were "the unidentified languages of the people now known as Sami, whose name then is unknown". Furthermore the section has only one researcher's material as a source, so how can we know if it's regarded as consensus theory or fringe theory or just one view among many by the body of researchers in the field? New theories shouldn't be put in without first describing what earlier theories or consensuses they deviate from or oppose. --AkselGerner (talk) 21:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)