Those who think the interchange of mid and high vowels in Kazan Tatar is amusing might enjoy these examples from North Saami. In this language, low and high vowels (*a and *ä at one end and *i at the other) swapped places in secondary syllables sometime in the past. *nimi ‘name’ > namma. *sompa ‘ring’ [...]
The international edition of Helsingin Sanomat continues to offer material for people interested in the Uralic languages with a profile of Pekka Sammallahti, the foremost living scholar of the Sámi languages and the author of what is for many students the way into the field, The Saami Languages: An Introduction. The bit on language preservation [...]
Helsingin Sanomat recently featured an article on a family trying to preserve Skolt Sámi, and I’m happy to see that this has made it to the English-language edition for the benefit of international readers: A flurry of activity is going on in the living room of an apartment in Ivalo in Finnish Lapland. Two-year-old Janna-Maria [...]
The Sami-titled Festschrift for Pekka Sammallahti Sámit, sánit, sátnehámit. Riepmočála Pekka Sammallahtii miessemánu 21. beaivve 2007, published last spring as Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 253, is now available online. There are a number of interesting papers here, published in Sami, German, Finnish or English. One of them in particular, Juha Janhunen’s ‘The primary laryngeal [...]
I’m taking the Finno-Ugrian Studies department’s Introduction to Historical Linguistics this semester. As I’ve long since become familiar with the comparative method, basic issues of areal convergence, and types of sound change, I assumed that the course would serve only for university credits and for improving my Finnish comprehension. But as all examples are drawn [...]
A post by Johanna Laakso on the Ura-list announced The Inari Sámis, a website put up by SIIDA with information on this small and little-known Sámi people. It’s available in English, Finnish, and Inari Sámi. In other news, the Sámi contestants have won at Liet Lavlut 2006, an alternative to the Eurovision contest that celebrates [...]