6 ms·

Sámi Languages and Dialects (2015)

47 points by DoreenMichele 4y ago

antris 4y ago
Sámi languages are split into many languages and dialects. Vast majority of the speakers are speaking Northern Sámi. But some have only a couple dozen speakers, and others are already extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#Classifica... The story of the Sámi people is very similar to many other native people. No independence allowed, decades and/or centuries of cultural assimilation and powerlessness. Only now the governments are starting to throw a bone to the Sámi people by funding language nests, but there is a long way to go until the Sámi people are in control of their own future. Interestingly, some Sámi people have taken on rapping to keep their languages alive. One of them being Amoc, who raps in Inari Sámi, which has around 400 speakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjwXx531Y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjwXx531Y4
- bungle 4y ago
  > The story of the Sámi people is very similar to many other native people... Also hitting them with bible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_the_S%C3%A1mi_people#Christianization_by_coercion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_the_S%C3%A...
  - sigg3 4y ago
    And booze, to a nation with lower tolerance. It's classic divide and conquer.
    - brokenkebab2 4y ago
      "Divide and conquer" means something different though
  - brokenkebab2 4y ago
    Christianization no doubt clashed with shamanism, and diminished its practices. Also made some of the Saami dialects written languages, and brought temperance - both hugely positive for cultural survival.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I think it is very different to other indigenous people, in many important ways. Sámi and Germanic speaking peoples have lived side by side for almost 2000 years. That's very different from the classical colonial story. For much of history, Sámi were exploited but prized subjects, because they were taxed in furs, a very profitable trade commodity. At one point, three states (Norway, Sweden and Russia) taxed the Sámi... although that can't have been fun for the Sámi, it also gave them considerable legal protection, since you didn't mess with someone that profitable. Assimilation is also a complex story. It was worst in Norway in the 20th century - after WW2, which makes it especially damning. There they committed basically all the classic colonial crimes that e.g. Canada and Australia committed against their indigenous populations - separation of families, suppression of language, forced sterilization, you name it. But at other times, especially in Sweden, they went to the other extreme of segregation instead, under the "Lapp ska vara lapp" policy, where Sami were not allowed to get education, and those who failed to live up to the exotisized image (e.g. by not being reindeer herders) were denied traditional rights. On religion, it's also rather far from the classic "they came and imposed their religion on us" story. Christianity didn't reach the Sámi much later than it reached the Norse, if it was later at all. The first chapel in Finnmark was apparently built by Sami. The presence of the Virgin Mary in some Sámi folk tales is good evidence that it wasn't after the reformation the Sámi became Christian. However, since the Sámi were at that time nomadic, had low literacy rates and lived geographically and culturally far from ecclesiastical overview, they did not stay orthodox and mixed in a lot of animistic beliefs and superstitions with their Christianity. Sápmi today is a stronghold of arch-conservative Christianity, in particular followers of the 19th century Sámi pietist reformer Lars Levi Læstadius, and that's another thing that doesn't fit well with the Sámi as a "typical indigenous people", as well as a source of conflict between generations, where younger Sámi people may be a lot more OK with the idea of themselves as basically pagan (and their pietist parent generation as self-hating colonialism victims). So, let's be careful to not squeeze the Sámi into a generic indigenous people mold. I get that doing so is often a well-meaning effort to justify Sámi rights, but it should not be necessary to cut the foot to make that shoe fit. I think it's important to focus on the value of language and culture over ancestry.
  - antris 4y ago
    Nothing about your comment disputes anything I said. I don't know why you posted this in such a contentious tone and implied that I'm squeezing "Sámi into a generic indigenous people mold". I wasn't stereotyping Sámi people, just talking about the challenges they face as a native minority people that live under a repressive government. You can find similar challenges posed to other native people, that's all I was saying.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  My Great Great Grandmother was Sami. I live in the U.S. So I guess you can connect the dots.
m2fkxy 4y ago
Last indigenous people of Europe, spanning across four countries. Beyond working hard to keep their languages and cultures alive, they are often fighting against industrial projects directly or indirectly endangering their main activity and source of income, namely reindeer herding. One of these projects, that got nixed recently by regional governments, is the Arctic Railway: https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/09/arctic-railway https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/09/arctic-rail...
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  As far as groups that have kept a continuous identity and language since time immemorial, there are also the Basques, located around the Bay of Biscay. And I believe there are other remote pockets of people that have distinctive genetics in other parts of Europe, but haven't retained a pre-Indo-European language.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    The Sámi haven't kept their language since time immemorial, if you base their identity on their supposed genetic uniqueness. Sámi is a finno-ugric language, and that language family is thought to have its origin in the Ural mountains, far, far east of Sápmi. Now, there are some who argue that the Sámi are in part genetic descendants of Norway's first post ice age Neolithic settlers. There are some arguments from the supposed genetic peculiarity of the Sámi towards this end. But if so, they didn't keep their language and culture, that has origins in the east. I think those genetic arguments are fishy anyway, it's just a little too convenient for (Sámi) nationalistic narratives. To be clear, I don't think the possibility that (proto-)samic speakers arrived in Scaninavia at more or less the same time as indo-european speakers, is in ANY way an argument against recognition and protection of Sámi language and culture. That should not in any way rest on some Neolithic blood quantum thing. In Norway, recognition is based on language, you can register in the Sámi rolls if you speak Sámi at home or your parents or grandparents (possibly great-grandparents too now) used to. That's the right way in my opinion, not genetics.
    - 4y ago
wolverine876 4y ago
Some context on dialects that I read, though I want to emphasize that it doesn't invalidate the OP or dialect research in general, it (hopefully) informs our understanding of it: "There are no such things as dialects. Or rather, 'a dialect' does not exist as a discrete entity. Attempts to delimit a dialect by topographical, political or administrative boundaries ignore the obvious fact that within any such boundaries there will be variation for some features, while other variants will cross the borders (Laing and Lass 2006: 417). / ... / A dialect atlas is, at least in part, a set of maps showing the distribution of linguistic features in space. Whether modern or historical, it is not made up, however, of static displays of dots or boundary markers on regional maps. Rather, it shows a continuum of overlapping distributions, where 'dialects' are assemblages of regional features that vary from map to map both spatially and temporally. This is because language change, like biological change, occurs differentially in different spatial settings. Change over time involves the vagaries of language use and thus introduces a necessary social dimension. Dialectology therefore operates on three planes: space, time and speech community." http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme_intro_ch1.html http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme_intro_ch1.html
thematrixturtle 4y ago
The Sami seem to come up on HN on a lot, but one angle I rarely see mentioned is how thoroughly assimilated into the majority cultures they are. I know two people of Sami descent, both of whom are from intermarried families, are physically indistinguishable from non-Sami, speak the majority language as their mother tongue and struggle to connect with Sami language, customs like reindeer herding, etc. And as the pie charts indicate, the vast majority of Sami are in this category. This is quite different to, say, Aboriginals in Australia, who are most definitely not integrated into the rest of Australian society.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  The oppression of the Sami started several centuries earlier, that's probably why.

47 points by DoreenMichele 4y ago

Sámi languages are split into many languages and dialects. Vast majority of the speakers are speaking Northern Sámi. But some have only a couple dozen speakers, and others are already extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_languages#Classifica... The story of the Sámi people is very similar to many other native people. No independence allowed, decades and/or centuries of cultural assimilation and powerlessness. Only now the governments are starting to throw a bone to the Sámi people by funding language nests, but there is a long way to go until the Sámi people are in control of their own future. Interestingly, some Sámi people have taken on rapping to keep their languages alive. One of them being Amoc, who raps in Inari Sámi, which has around 400 speakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjwXx531Y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjwXx531Y4

bungle 4y ago
> The story of the Sámi people is very similar to many other native people... Also hitting them with bible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_the_S%C3%A1mi_people#Christianization_by_coercion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianization_of_the_S%C3%A...
- sigg3 4y ago
  And booze, to a nation with lower tolerance. It's classic divide and conquer.
  - brokenkebab2 4y ago
    "Divide and conquer" means something different though
- brokenkebab2 4y ago
  Christianization no doubt clashed with shamanism, and diminished its practices. Also made some of the Saami dialects written languages, and brought temperance - both hugely positive for cultural survival.
vintermann 4y ago
I think it is very different to other indigenous people, in many important ways. Sámi and Germanic speaking peoples have lived side by side for almost 2000 years. That's very different from the classical colonial story. For much of history, Sámi were exploited but prized subjects, because they were taxed in furs, a very profitable trade commodity. At one point, three states (Norway, Sweden and Russia) taxed the Sámi... although that can't have been fun for the Sámi, it also gave them considerable legal protection, since you didn't mess with someone that profitable. Assimilation is also a complex story. It was worst in Norway in the 20th century - after WW2, which makes it especially damning. There they committed basically all the classic colonial crimes that e.g. Canada and Australia committed against their indigenous populations - separation of families, suppression of language, forced sterilization, you name it. But at other times, especially in Sweden, they went to the other extreme of segregation instead, under the "Lapp ska vara lapp" policy, where Sami were not allowed to get education, and those who failed to live up to the exotisized image (e.g. by not being reindeer herders) were denied traditional rights. On religion, it's also rather far from the classic "they came and imposed their religion on us" story. Christianity didn't reach the Sámi much later than it reached the Norse, if it was later at all. The first chapel in Finnmark was apparently built by Sami. The presence of the Virgin Mary in some Sámi folk tales is good evidence that it wasn't after the reformation the Sámi became Christian. However, since the Sámi were at that time nomadic, had low literacy rates and lived geographically and culturally far from ecclesiastical overview, they did not stay orthodox and mixed in a lot of animistic beliefs and superstitions with their Christianity. Sápmi today is a stronghold of arch-conservative Christianity, in particular followers of the 19th century Sámi pietist reformer Lars Levi Læstadius, and that's another thing that doesn't fit well with the Sámi as a "typical indigenous people", as well as a source of conflict between generations, where younger Sámi people may be a lot more OK with the idea of themselves as basically pagan (and their pietist parent generation as self-hating colonialism victims). So, let's be careful to not squeeze the Sámi into a generic indigenous people mold. I get that doing so is often a well-meaning effort to justify Sámi rights, but it should not be necessary to cut the foot to make that shoe fit. I think it's important to focus on the value of language and culture over ancestry.
- antris 4y ago
  Nothing about your comment disputes anything I said. I don't know why you posted this in such a contentious tone and implied that I'm squeezing "Sámi into a generic indigenous people mold". I wasn't stereotyping Sámi people, just talking about the challenges they face as a native minority people that live under a repressive government. You can find similar challenges posed to other native people, that's all I was saying.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
My Great Great Grandmother was Sami. I live in the U.S. So I guess you can connect the dots.

m2fkxy 4y ago

Last indigenous people of Europe, spanning across four countries. Beyond working hard to keep their languages and cultures alive, they are often fighting against industrial projects directly or indirectly endangering their main activity and source of income, namely reindeer herding. One of these projects, that got nixed recently by regional governments, is the Arctic Railway: https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/09/arctic-railway https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/09/arctic-rail...

acjohnson55 4y ago
As far as groups that have kept a continuous identity and language since time immemorial, there are also the Basques, located around the Bay of Biscay. And I believe there are other remote pockets of people that have distinctive genetics in other parts of Europe, but haven't retained a pre-Indo-European language.
- vintermann 4y ago
  The Sámi haven't kept their language since time immemorial, if you base their identity on their supposed genetic uniqueness. Sámi is a finno-ugric language, and that language family is thought to have its origin in the Ural mountains, far, far east of Sápmi. Now, there are some who argue that the Sámi are in part genetic descendants of Norway's first post ice age Neolithic settlers. There are some arguments from the supposed genetic peculiarity of the Sámi towards this end. But if so, they didn't keep their language and culture, that has origins in the east. I think those genetic arguments are fishy anyway, it's just a little too convenient for (Sámi) nationalistic narratives. To be clear, I don't think the possibility that (proto-)samic speakers arrived in Scaninavia at more or less the same time as indo-european speakers, is in ANY way an argument against recognition and protection of Sámi language and culture. That should not in any way rest on some Neolithic blood quantum thing. In Norway, recognition is based on language, you can register in the Sámi rolls if you speak Sámi at home or your parents or grandparents (possibly great-grandparents too now) used to. That's the right way in my opinion, not genetics.
  - 4y ago

wolverine876 4y ago

Some context on dialects that I read, though I want to emphasize that it doesn't invalidate the OP or dialect research in general, it (hopefully) informs our understanding of it: "There are no such things as dialects. Or rather, 'a dialect' does not exist as a discrete entity. Attempts to delimit a dialect by topographical, political or administrative boundaries ignore the obvious fact that within any such boundaries there will be variation for some features, while other variants will cross the borders (Laing and Lass 2006: 417). / ... / A dialect atlas is, at least in part, a set of maps showing the distribution of linguistic features in space. Whether modern or historical, it is not made up, however, of static displays of dots or boundary markers on regional maps. Rather, it shows a continuum of overlapping distributions, where 'dialects' are assemblages of regional features that vary from map to map both spatially and temporally. This is because language change, like biological change, occurs differentially in different spatial settings. Change over time involves the vagaries of language use and thus introduces a necessary social dimension. Dialectology therefore operates on three planes: space, time and speech community." http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme_intro_ch1.html http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme_intro_ch1.html

thematrixturtle 4y ago

The Sami seem to come up on HN on a lot, but one angle I rarely see mentioned is how thoroughly assimilated into the majority cultures they are. I know two people of Sami descent, both of whom are from intermarried families, are physically indistinguishable from non-Sami, speak the majority language as their mother tongue and struggle to connect with Sami language, customs like reindeer herding, etc. And as the pie charts indicate, the vast majority of Sami are in this category. This is quite different to, say, Aboriginals in Australia, who are most definitely not integrated into the rest of Australian society.

actionfromafar 4y ago
The oppression of the Sami started several centuries earlier, that's probably why.