Southern Sámi

About

Southern Saami (Åarjelsaemien gïele) is a Uralic language spoken in Norway and Sweden. According to the Arctic University of Norway, South Saami has just over 500 native speakers, equal to less than 2% of the estimated total number of native speakers of Saami languages overall. I am Southern and Ume Saami. When I first encountered the wealth of information on Southern Saami in 2020, I learned that I had before me the unique opportunity to draw on these materials and create an extensive, heavily researched English dictionary for Southern Saami. In order to begin with this endeavor, I first spoke with the copyright holder and publisher of the source materials for their blessing. I then consulted heavily with personal connections in the Saami community in general, and the Southern Saami community in particular, to see if they would be willing to assist me in the creation of a freely accessible, non-monetized dictionary. Having received consent from everybody whom I approached, I started working in February of 2021. My primary source for this Living Dictionary was Gustav Hasselbrink's German-South Saami Südlappisches Wörterbuch, which contains a wealth of highly detailed definitions and regional variations for given words. However, as this dictionary was written with archaic terminology and orthography, I referred to Lajla Mattsson Magga's Norsk-sydsamisk ordbok to ensure that the spelling in this Living Dictionary is compliant with modern South Saami spelling. The source entries I created do sometimes contain Ume Saami words, as well as discrepancies between the source materials. I have omitted these from the dictionary presented here. Credit for this dictionary goes to Anna H., Vegard H., Ylva EHM, Mika JG, Juss Nigá, Michael Rießler, Annika Palm, and Björn Lundqvist, who assisted me with any questions that I had concerning terminology and grammar in the source materials, as well as how to properly translate confusing terms into English. Anna Luisa Daigneault and…

Grammar

Please refer to Jussi Ylikoski's work South Saami (2022) and Richard Kowalik's Towards a grammar of spoken South Saami (2023) for a detailed explanation of South Saami grammar in English.