Sami (Northern)

Where it’s spoken

Northern Sami (Davvisámegiella) is spoken across Sápmi — the Sami homeland encompassing northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland (the Kola Peninsula in Russia has different Sami varieties). About 25,000 people speak Northern Sami, the largest of the ten Sami languages. Norway, Sweden, and Finland all have Sami Parliaments and provide some education in the language.

What it sounds like

Northern Sami has consonant gradation — consonants alternate between “strong” and “weak” grades in specific grammatical contexts. It distinguishes three degrees of consonant length (short, long, overlong), like Estonian. It has a complex vowel system with phonemic length and an ablaut pattern affecting many word forms.

How it’s written

Northern Sami uses the Latin alphabet plus á, č, đ, ŋ, š, ŧ, and ž. The current orthography was adopted in 1979 across all three countries to provide a unified standard. Earlier orthographies were national and incompatible.

History

Sami peoples are recognized as indigenous and have inhabited northern Fennoscandia for millennia, predating later Scandinavian and Finnish settlement. Generations of assimilationist policy (Norwegianization, Swedification, Finnicization) suppressed Sami; recent decades have brought revitalization.