- Official language in
- Finland
- Also spoken in
- Norway, Sweden
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
North Sami is spoken in Finland, Norway and Sweden. According to a Galdu summary of the Sami Act, Sami and Norwegian are of equal status in Norway, within the administrative areas for the Sami language. In Finland, the Sámi Parliament states that the Sámi Language Act made Sámi an official language.
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Script & pronunciation
North Sami is written in Latin letters. The Nobimu article says that for more than two centuries the Sámi languages were written with the same Latin alphabet as the other Nordic languages, and describes Rasmus Rask as an early orthographer who supported the principle that the phonemes should directly correspond to the graphemes. This app's phrase cards use the Latin alphabet with accented letters such as á and č, as in Ándagassii and čalmmeheapme, and have no separate romanization line.
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Grammar essentials
North Sami negation uses a verb of negation, which is inflected for person and number and is followed by the main verb in a special connegative form. In the negation table, the third person singular is ii and the third person plural is eai, while the first person singular is in, as in Mun in máhte hupmat sámegiela ("I can't speak Sami"). Verbs also have dual forms alongside singular and plural; in the negation table the first person dual is ean. Words also undergo consonant gradation, an alternation in the consonants in the middle of the word, so that some forms take a strong grade and others a weak grade, as in viessu and viesut. The yes/no question particle go follows the verb, as in Lea go dáppe heaisa? ("Is there an elevator here?"). The word for "yes", juo, has the same form as the adverb "already".
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Politeness & etiquette
The Giellatekno grammar notes that the conditional mood is used to express modest requests or to be polite. In this app's cards, the greeting Bures has no polite or informal variants, and is also used for hello at any time of day.