North Saami language x
Davvisámegiella x
North Saami language x
North Saami is, on the basis of native speakers, the biggest Saami language. Saami languages are members of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language family. Typical to the most of the Saami languages are the following linguistic features:
- the languages are suffixing (basicly agglutinative) languages (use endings to mark grammatical relations) but to a high degree also fusional due to the phonetic and morphophonetic development in Proto-Saami
- they have no grammatical gender
- there are no definite or indefinite articles
- in grammatical categories related to persons (personal pronouns, personal endings in verbs, possessive suffixes in nouns) there are three numbers: singular, dual and plural
- negation in verbs is expressed with the help of a negative auxiliary and connegative form of the main verb
North Saami has appr. 30 000 native speakers. The neighbouring Saami languages are Lule Saami in the west and Inari and Skolt Saami in the east, in the municipality of Inari, where all these three Saami languages are spoken. North Saami can be divided to several dialects. The main dialects are the Finnmark Saami (divided further into eastern and western subdialects), Sea Saami (on the Northern coast of Norway) and Torne Saami. The dialects differ to a great degree especially in their phonetic structure.
Grammatical relations in nouns are expressed by case endings (case forms). There are two numeri in the absolute declension for nouns: singular and plural. North Saami uses the following case forms (guolli 'fish'):
Nordsamiska x
- Pohjoissaame x
- Davvisámegiella x
- North Saami language x
| Case | Sg | Pl | - |
|---|---|---|---|
| nominative | guolli | guolit | the case of the Subject |
| gen.-acc. | guoli | guliid | the case of the Object or the owner |
| illative | guollái | guliide | answers the question »to what, where to» |
| locative | guolis | guliin | answers the question »where, from where» |
| comitative | guliin | guliiguin | answers the question »with what» |
| abessive | guoli haga | gulii haga | answers the question »without what» |
| essive | guollin | guollin | expresses the position »as a fish» |
