Инaри сaми тілі: Финлaндияның жоғaлып бара жaтқaн тілі

Endangered Uralic language of Finland

Inari Sámi ( or ) is a Sámi language spoken by the Inari Sámi of Finland. It has approximately 300 speakers, the majority of whom are middle aged or older and live in the municipality of Inari. According to the Sámi Parliament of Finland, 269 persons used Inari Sámi as their first language. It is the only Sámi language that is spoken exclusively in Finland.

The first book in Inari Sámi was Anar sämi kiela aapis kirje ja doctor Martti Lutherus Ucca katkismus, which was written and translated by Edvard Wilhelm Borg in 1859. The written history of modern Inari Sámi, however, is said to begin with Lauri Arvid Itkonen's translation of the history of the Bible in 1906, although he had already translated some other books into Inari Sámi (Martin Luther and John Charles Ryles). After that, Inari Sámi was mainly published in books written by linguists, in particular Frans Äimä and Erkki Itkonen. For many years, very little literature was written in Inari Sámi, although Sämitigge has funded and published a lot of books, etc., in recent years. Since 1992, Finland's Sámi have had the right to interact with officials in their own language in areas where they have traditionally lived: Enontekiö, Utsjoki, Inari and the northern part of Sodankylä as official policy favors the conservation of the language. All announcements in Inari, which is the only officially quadrilingual municipality in Finland, must be made in Finnish, North Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi. Only about 10% of the public servants in the area, however, can serve the Inari Sámi speaking population in Inari Sámi, so Finnish is used by the remaining 90%. In 1986, the Anarâškielâ servi (Inari Sámi Language Association) was founded to promote the language and its use. The association publishes numerous books, textbooks, a calendar, etc., in Inari Sámi. They have established a language immersion program in 1997 for 3 to 6 year old children in a day care in Inari and Ivalo. In 2007, the association started publishing an Inari Sámi newspaper called Kierâš online. A new phenomenon is the use of Inari Sámi in rap songs by Mikkâl Morottaja, whose stage name is Amoc. Morottaja published the first full length Inari Sámi rap CD in the world on 6 February 2007, the Sámi National Day.

Inari Sámi, like the other Samic languages, has fixed word initial stress. Syllables are furthermore divided into feet, usually consisting of two syllables each, and with secondary stress on the first syllable of every foot. In the other Samic languages the last syllable in a word with an odd number of syllables is not assigned to a foot. In Inari Sámi, however, two important changes in the early development of Inari Sámi have changed this structure, making the prosodic rhythm quite different:
In words with an odd number of syllables, the last two syllables were converted into a foot, leaving the third last syllable as a foot of its own. The apocope of certain final vowels, in words of three syllables or more, reduced this new final foot to a single syllable. Consequently, Inari Sámi distinguishes prosodically between words that originally ended in a vowel but have undergone apocope, and words that already ended in a consonant in Proto Samic. This rearrangement of the foot structure has an effect on the length of vowels and consonants.

In dictionaries, grammars and other linguistic works, the following additional marks are used. These are not used in normal writing. A dot is placed below consonants to indicate a half long consonant: đ̣, j̣, ḷ, ṃ, ṇ, ṇj, ŋ̣, ṛ, ṿ. Some works may instead print the letter in bold, or use a capital letter. A vertical line ˈ (U+02C8 MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE), typewriter apostrophe or other similar mark is placed between consonants to indicate that the preceding consonant is long, and the preceding diphthong is short. It is only used when a diphthong precedes. The same mark placed between a diphthong and a consonant indicates that the diphthong is short. The same mark placed between a single vowel and a consonant indicates that the vowel is half long.

Inari Sámi, like Finnish and the other Sámi languages, has a negative verb. In Inari Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to mood (indicative, imperative and optative), person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural). Ind. pres. Imperative Optative sg. du pl. sg. du pl. sg. du pl. 1 jiem iän ep 1 – – 1 iällum iälloon iällup 2 jieh eppee eppeđ 2 ele ellee elleđ 2 ele ellee elleđ 3 ij iävá iä 3 – – – 3 iälus iällus iällus