Northern Sami orthography
Encyclopedia
The orthography
used to write Northern Sami
has experienced numerous changes over the several hundred years it has existed. For most of this time, Norway
, Sweden
and Finland
— the three countries where Northern Sámi is spoken — each had their own orthography for teaching the Sámi
within their border. In 1979, a common pan-Scandinavian Sámi orthography was agreed on.
The roots of the current orthography for Northern Sámi were laid by Rasmus Rask, who, after discussions with Nils Vibe Stockfleth
, published Ræsonneret lappisk sproglære efter den sprogart, som bruges af fjældlapperne i Porsangerfjorden i Finmarken. En omarbejdelse af Prof. Knud Leems Lappiske grammatica in 1832. Rask felt that the orthography should be based on the principle of a single grapheme for each sound, i.e. it should be a phonemic orthography
. All of the orthographies that have been used for Northern Sámi trace their roots back to Rask's system. Following in the tradition of Rask meant that diacritics were used with some consonants (č, đ, ŋ, š, ŧ and ž), which caused data-processing problems before Unicode
was introduced. Both Stockfleth and Jens Andreas Friis
went on to publish grammar books and dictionaries for Sámi.
.
Furthermore, it can be said, jokingly though with a grain of truth, that the orthography used for Northern Sámi has changed each time the professor of Sámi has changed at the University of Oslo
, i.e., with Nils Vibe Stockfleth
, J. A. Friis
, Konrad Nielsen
, Knut Bergsland
and Ole Henrik Magga
. This generalization is no longer true for the two most recent professors and the latest orthography. The 1979 orthography was the result of a collective effort by Sámi
from all three countries where Northern Sámi
is spoken, working together to reach a consensus over a ten-year period.
published a Sami grammar in 1840.
published in 1895, in the Sámi newspaper called Saǥai Muittalægje and commonly associated with the Nuorttanaste
, a religious publication of the Lapp Mission, which was first published in 1898 as it had used this orthography for many years , although it now uses the 1979 orthography for about half the articles. The one thing that makes this orthography different from all of the other orthographies used to write the various Sámi languages is that it is the one that greatest number of Sámi have learned over the last 100 years.
J. A. Friis
starting working on translating the Bible since Stockfleth had only managed to translate the New Testament
. Of great importance to the translation work being done was the Friis was assisted by people who spoke Sámi
as their mother tongue. In 1854, Friis was joined by Hans Jacobsen Hætta, who had been sentenced to jail in Kristiania following the Kautokeino Uprising
. In 1874, their reworked version of Stockfleth's New Testament in Northern Sámi was published. Friis went on to also publish the Old Testament
in cooperation with Lars Jacobsen Hætta and Just Knud Qvigstad
in 1895.
, Matthew
12:1-8.
Sami orthography
Sami orthography refers to the various orthographies used by the six Sámi languages that have their own literary language: Southern Sami, Lule Sami, Northern Sami, Inari Sami, Skolt Sami and Kildin Sami.-Orthographical trends:...
used to write Northern Sami
Northern Sami
Northern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...
has experienced numerous changes over the several hundred years it has existed. For most of this time, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
and Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
— the three countries where Northern Sámi is spoken — each had their own orthography for teaching the Sámi
Sami people
The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...
within their border. In 1979, a common pan-Scandinavian Sámi orthography was agreed on.
The roots of the current orthography for Northern Sámi were laid by Rasmus Rask, who, after discussions with Nils Vibe Stockfleth
Nils Vibe Stockfleth
Nils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of the written form of the Northern Sami language...
, published Ræsonneret lappisk sproglære efter den sprogart, som bruges af fjældlapperne i Porsangerfjorden i Finmarken. En omarbejdelse af Prof. Knud Leems Lappiske grammatica in 1832. Rask felt that the orthography should be based on the principle of a single grapheme for each sound, i.e. it should be a phonemic orthography
Phonemic orthography
A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...
. All of the orthographies that have been used for Northern Sámi trace their roots back to Rask's system. Following in the tradition of Rask meant that diacritics were used with some consonants (č, đ, ŋ, š, ŧ and ž), which caused data-processing problems before Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
was introduced. Both Stockfleth and Jens Andreas Friis
Jens Andreas Friis
Jens Andreas Friis was a Norwegian linguist and author. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Sami language studies.-Biography:...
went on to publish grammar books and dictionaries for Sámi.
The various orthographies in a nutshell
The country or countries in parentheses following the name of the orthography or its inventor is where the orthography was used. It was only in 1979 that Norway, Sweden and Finland had a common orthography for SámiNorthern Sami
Northern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...
.
- Knud LeemKnud LeemKnud Leem was a Norwegian priest and linguist. Knud Leem started the linguistic study of Sámi when he published a grammar book of it in 1748...
(Norway) - Nils Vibe StockflethNils Vibe StockflethNils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of the written form of the Northern Sami language...
(Norway) - J. A. FriisJens Andreas FriisJens Andreas Friis was a Norwegian linguist and author. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Sami language studies.-Biography:...
(Norway) - Konrad NielsenKonrad NielsenKonrad Hartvig Isak Rosenvinge Nielsen was a Norwegian philologist. He spent most of his career as a professor at the Royal Frederick University , as a lecturer, textbook writer, lexicographer and translator...
(in scientific works throughout the 20th century) - Paavo Ravila (1934) (Finland)
- Erkki Itkonen (1951) (Finland)
- BergslandKnut BergslandKnut Bergsland was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic and Eskimo–Aleut languages.-Career:...
-RuongIsrael RuongIsrael Ruong was a Swedish-Sámi linguist, politician and professor of Sámi languages and culture at the University of Uppsala in Sweden....
orthography (Norway, Sweden) - 1979 orthography (Norway, Sweden, Finland)
Background
Four main points were considered in launching new orthographies for Northern Sámi:- Knowing in principle the details of the orthography
- Recognizing the linguistic changes that affect Northern Sámi
- Selecting which dialect to use for the Northern Sámi literary language
- Considering the Northern Sámi spelling in other countries
Furthermore, it can be said, jokingly though with a grain of truth, that the orthography used for Northern Sámi has changed each time the professor of Sámi has changed at the University of Oslo
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...
, i.e., with Nils Vibe Stockfleth
Nils Vibe Stockfleth
Nils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of the written form of the Northern Sami language...
, J. A. Friis
Jens Andreas Friis
Jens Andreas Friis was a Norwegian linguist and author. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Sami language studies.-Biography:...
, Konrad Nielsen
Konrad Nielsen
Konrad Hartvig Isak Rosenvinge Nielsen was a Norwegian philologist. He spent most of his career as a professor at the Royal Frederick University , as a lecturer, textbook writer, lexicographer and translator...
, Knut Bergsland
Knut Bergsland
Knut Bergsland was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic and Eskimo–Aleut languages.-Career:...
and Ole Henrik Magga
Ole Henrik Magga
Ole Henrik Magga is a Sámi linguist and politician from Kautokeino, Norway.-As a linguist:As a linguist, Ole Henrik Magga is best known for his work on syntax...
. This generalization is no longer true for the two most recent professors and the latest orthography. The 1979 orthography was the result of a collective effort by Sámi
Sami people
The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...
from all three countries where Northern Sámi
Northern Sami
Northern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...
is spoken, working together to reach a consensus over a ten-year period.
The Stockfleth orthography
Inspired by Rasmus Rask, Nils Vibe StockflethNils Vibe Stockfleth
Nils Joachim Christian Vibe Stockfleth was a Norwegian cleric who was instrumental in the first development of the written form of the Northern Sami language...
published a Sami grammar in 1840.
The Friis orthography
The Friis orthography was used in the Sámi version of the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
published in 1895, in the Sámi newspaper called Saǥai Muittalægje and commonly associated with the Nuorttanaste
Nuorttanaste
Nuorttanaste is a religious publication from Norway published in Northern Sámi. The first time it appeared in print was in 1898, when it was published once a month. Currently, the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Norway puts out eleven issues a year.- Editors-in-chief :* Gustav Lund...
, a religious publication of the Lapp Mission, which was first published in 1898 as it had used this orthography for many years , although it now uses the 1979 orthography for about half the articles. The one thing that makes this orthography different from all of the other orthographies used to write the various Sámi languages is that it is the one that greatest number of Sámi have learned over the last 100 years.
J. A. Friis
Jens Andreas Friis
Jens Andreas Friis was a Norwegian linguist and author. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Sami language studies.-Biography:...
starting working on translating the Bible since Stockfleth had only managed to translate the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
. Of great importance to the translation work being done was the Friis was assisted by people who spoke Sámi
Northern Sami
Northern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...
as their mother tongue. In 1854, Friis was joined by Hans Jacobsen Hætta, who had been sentenced to jail in Kristiania following the Kautokeino Uprising
Sami revolt in Guovdageaidnu
The Sami revolt in Guovdageaidnu, also known as the Kautokeino uprising, was a revolt in the town of Kautokeino in northern Norway in 1852 by a group of Sami who attacked representatives of the Norwegian authorities. The rebels killed the local merchant and the local government official, whipped...
. In 1874, their reworked version of Stockfleth's New Testament in Northern Sámi was published. Friis went on to also publish the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
in cooperation with Lars Jacobsen Hætta and Just Knud Qvigstad
Just Knud Qvigstad
Just Knud Qvigstad was a Norwegian philologist, linguist, ethnographer, historian and cultural historian. He was also a headmaster in Tromsø, and a politician for the Conservative Party who served as mayor of Tromsø and as Minister of Education and Church Affairs.-Personal life:He was born in...
in 1895.
The Nielsen orthography
Konrad Nielsen developed his orthography for use in his dictionary and his textbooks. This orthography is still used when quoting examples of Northern Sámi in international Finno-Ugric works.Vowels
The following table shows the correspondence between the vowels used in Nielsen's orthography and in the orthography approved in 1979.| Nielsen's orthography | a | â | e | i | o | u | æ |
| 1979 – odd syllables | á | a | e | i | o | u | ea |
| 1979 – even syllables | a | â | i | e | u | o | ea |
Examples of the various orthographies for Northern Sámi
Extracts of text from the New TestamentNew Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
12:1-8.