Difference between revisions of "Talk:About Lule Sami"

Revision as of 19:34, 21 November 2008

here are bits and pieces that will help us to edit and further extend the article page.

It is absolutely crucial that we have references for everything claimed. These references need to be there before we open these pages to the public which is hopefully on November 20th!! (Dorothee)

The above statement was somewhat optimistic I guess :=(. Still a lot of references missing and lots of things that need to be tied up. (Dorothee 20:31, 21 November 2008 (CET))

(1) Poem

bajedihtte

åjvijdihtte

ja bigodihtte

slehpájdihtte

This poem is nice! And the grammar too! Now I leave Trondheim... See you on TypeCraft!... (Kristin - Oct. 20 18:00]

I see the translation, but I do not understand the meaning. I guess I am not a poem person. Can someone help me understand this?

If we publish this poem, we need a reference and a context.

Dorothee

(2) ÁJLUOVTA SKÅVLÅ... Here is the printing-friendly page in the Lokalavisa NordSalten:

http://www.nord-salten.no/nyheter/samisk/ajluovta_skavla_buosjes_oahppe_vas_svierigis_vadtsin#tips

It is possible to put it somewhere. (Kristin)

Yes, ofc. it is. In which context do you want to mention this link? (Dorothee)

(3) Here is a picture from the museum at Árran, from the exibition Viessom: A couple in bout, fishing: [[1]] (Kristin)

We cannot use information that tells us that the Lule Sami culture is a mountain and Forest Culture in Norway! This concerns only Samis on the Swedish side of the border. On the Norwegian side of the border we find a Costal Sami culture ehich differs from the Costal Sami Culture further north! I can write shortly about this. (Kristin)

Pictures can be integrated, yes, again it is the context that is important! (Dorothee)

The Arran picture is nice, however, my major concern is that we give a readable and informative representation of Lule Sami. So there should be a clear focus on the language!!! (Dorothee)

How should we classifiy the Sami language family? - Discussion

Hi folks;

I am not so sure the paragraph below, which I have moved from the article page to this page, is in its final format.

Here the paragraph:

The closest relatives are Finnish and Estonian, yet the Sami separated from these more than 3,000 years ago. This means that the Sami language group has an independent history that is at least as long as that of the Germanic language group, and that is twice as old as that of the Romance language group. This long history and the fact that they are usually not mutually intelligible makes them different languages, not different dialects as they are often mistakenly described.

(a) I would want to see a reference for the claim that the Sami language group has a history at least as long a the Germanic and twice as long a the Romance language. (Dorothee) BTW, is it true that the Romance language family is half as old as the Germanic, does not quite sound right? We definitely need references in case we leave this sentence in the text. I would opt for omitting it. It is not central to our concern. (Dorothee)

I do not know of any knowledge that says Sami is 'older' than other languages. This way of thinking about languages is absurd! - Languages change all the time, and at one point they have been through so many quantitative changes (many small changes) that the language experiences a change in quality. In Norwegian there were quantitative changes after the Great Plague which resulted in a quantitative change around 1550: New Norwegian was a fact (the name in opposition to Old Norwegian - or Norse). (Kristin)

Different Sami dialects or different Sami languages?

I (when I talk about it!) explain Sami to have three main language groups: Eastern Saami Languages group, Central Saami Languages group, and Southern Saami Languages group. Sea Saami, Inari Saami, North Saami, Lule Saami and Pite Saami belongs to the Central Saami Languages group. The Central Sami Languages group have quantity change in common. There are 10 different tongues of Sami - and each of them can be divided in dialectal groups (see Sammallahti). Different language groups is one factor that counts for considering South Sami and East (Skolt) Sami as different 'languages' than the languages belonging in the Central Sami Languages group.(Kristin)

These Sami languages are written with different orthography: Latin and Cyrillic - and several different solutions at least for the Latin alphabets. So in Norway East Sami, North Sami, Lule Sami and South Sami are all written with a different alphabet (I have no information about Pite Sami and Ume Sami). This situation makes communication between the different Sami groups difficult. This is a second factor that makes the variants of Sami languages rather than dialects. (Kristin).

Neighboring Sami dialects are not so different that it is a hindrance for mutual understanding, but the dialects are gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility. Samis have 80% of their vocabulary in common, but the semantics of the words can differ substantially; in addition one finds differences in syntax, morphology and phonology. Samis talk their own language inside their own group, outside the group the majority language is usually used. Lack of mutual intelligibility is a third factor. (Kristin)

When we go thousand years back, the Sami languages (or dialect groups) were more similar than they are today. I suppose Pekka Sammallahti is one that knows a lot about this. In his book "The Saami Languages" he writes also about diachronic developments. (Kristin)

If we compare today's Sami languages with Norwegian and the languages N. is related too, the older all-Sami language (do not remember what it is called just now) may be compared with Germanic. I can look up when mayor changes have taken place in the history of the Sami languages, - but this will still not 'prove' anything in a discussion of 'how old' Sami languages are.

So may be we quit talking about 'old' languages... (Kristin)

The statement I would like to see is: Saami has been spoken on the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas in Northwest Europe since prehistoric times. (Krsitin)

Concerning the sentence:

"Note that the Sea Saami no longer have an independent language, but have adopted North Saami, Lule Saami or Norwegian."

"...no longer have an independent language"? Well, Sea Sami have never had an independent language. What does this mean? (Kristin)

Sea Sami is an independent language which today is spoken by old people in Kvænangen and Varanger. It has not been an independent written language, but this holds also for Pite Saami and Ume Saami. (Kristin)

To be quite honest, I find this whole discussion quite disturbing. There seems to be a lot of "received wisdom", misunderstanding, and to be quite honest Germanic-centrism, here that has little bearing on the real issue - the history and relationship among the Saami languages and other languages. I do not have time to add my 2 cents at the moment, but I will try to clear up some of the issues soon. [Bruce]

Again I would like to repeat that whatever we claim about the history of Sami on the article page needs to be backed up by references.

Why are the dialects of Sami considered independent languages is a good question, and it should find a good answer. I also think we should have an answer to the question to which extend the languages within the Sami family are mutually understandable.

The issue how old in comparison to other languages Sami really is seems to me beside the point. (Dorothee)

An Invitation to write an article page about Lule Sami and the Documentation of Lule Sami

Hi Kristin and Svenn Egil,

This will be our project page!!! (click back to article)

It's purpose is ofc to report on the annotation of Lule Sami texts, but written up in a way that it is interesting to all ppl interested in languages, or Lule Sami, or both.

In short: NOT JUST FOR LINGUISTS

We should make sure that this becomes a page that has information that cannot be found on the Wikipedia or any other well known web page.

Moreover, it should be interesting and beautiful information - so not too much text; instead some text made attractive by pictures, music files, cool links, and also with a internal link to your personal page in this TC wiki ( each annotator should have his/her own page in the TCwiki) so that ppl can see who the ppl are that annotate Lule Sami.

Here now some links and text snippets that I found interesting in this connection:

http://boreale.konto.itv.se/laante.htm http://boreale.konto.itv.se/samieng1.htm

Bluegreen: LuleSami. Mountain and ForestSami culture in Norway and Sweden, many famous handicrafters and chanters from this group, language is locally quite strong. Separate educational institutions with several textbooks in the language, but not for all subjects are taught. A small number of books are published each year in this language. Traditional and present day cultural center: Jokkmokk, Sweden.

Here a citation that I found: (see source below) As a curiosity I'd like to mention that there's one Sami word that has made it into several of the major languages of this world, that word is Tundra -doesn't it speak volumes about which part of the world this is. :)

When Nils-Aslak Valkeapää in his book The Sun—my Father (1991), chooses to create a metaphorical poem of a migrating herd of reindeer and uses [in his poem] some of the wealth of names that exist in Sami to describe the reindeer’s appearance, age and sex, he does so not only to demonstrate the wealth of terminology within the Sami language—he does something beyond that: He plays with the language, conjuring up concepts that have never been used before in that fashion. He conceives, in a sense, new fictional animals by combining familiar words in new ways. And he creates different reindeer which, in terms of their being a part of the herd or outside of it, can easily be viewed as parallels to the artist and his or her position in society, as well as to all human beings in their common experiences of being part of a "flock" or alone.

To this wealth of words can be added a great number of Sami onomatopoetical expressions for sounds pertaining to migration, words for working the herd, for the baying of dogs,and the sounds of a thousand hoofs on frozen ground, for undulating moors over which reindeer horns move, for the sound of bells that, like a blanket of clouds, lift the sky up and give the basis for life in these northern regions. And, as if that isn’t enough, there are allusions to the Sami national anthem, and tracks left behind by the herd, both concrete tracks where it has walked and abstract tracks for us, the readers, to follow back into history. Whether we journey with the herd or only pass by it as we wander, it is impossible for us to survive into the future without the tracks, without nature: The River of Life, the daughter of spring, sap, the mosquito maidens and "the sun/red and warm/moved happiness/ into the morning." Because "nothing remains of us/but a yoik in the singing wind/a dream about being." But even so: "and time does not exist, no end, none/and time is, eternal, always, is," and we are all part of "the life’s circle/infinite/without/beginning/or end/fulfills/changes/colors"…"the horizon’s red dawn/ the starry peaks."

taken from: http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20C%20Vol.%2016.2-18.1/Vol.%2016.2/haraldgaski.html

At the beginning it might be confusing to edit this wiki, but one learns it rather fast :=) I used the following link to get the information I needed:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing

I hope you find this useful. Dorothee