Native to Norway, Sweden Writing system Latin Glottolog pite1240 | Native speakers 25 to 50 (2010) ISO 639-3 sje | |
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Language family Uralic
Sami
Western
Pite Sami | ||
Pite Sami, also known as Arjeplog Sami, is a Sami language traditionally spoken in Sweden and Norway. It is a critically endangered language that has only about 25–50 native speakers left and is now only spoken on the Swedish side of the border along the Pite River in the north of Arjeplog and Arvidsjaur and in the mountainous areas of the Arjeplog municipality.
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Classification
Pite Sami is a part of the Western Sami group, together with Southern Sami and Ume Sami to the south, Lule Sami and Northern Sami to the north. Of these, Pite Sami shows closest affinity to Lule Sami, but a number of features also show similarity to Ume and Southern Sami.
Cases
Pite Sámi has 9 cases:
Person
Pite Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:
Mood
Pite Sami has five grammatical moods:
Grammatical number
Pite Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:
Tense
Pite Sami verbs conjugate for two simple tenses:
and two compound tenses:
Negative verb
Pite Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Pite Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to mood (indicative, imperative and optative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural). This differs from some other the other Sami languages, e.g. from Northern Sami, which do not conjugate according to tense and other Sami languages, that do not use the optative.
Non-past indicative Past indicative sg. du. pl. sg. du. pl. 1 iv ien iehp 1 ittjiv iejmen iejmeh iep ittjijmen ittjijmeh 2 ih iehpen iehpit 2 ittjih iejten iejteh ähpen ihpit ittjijten ittjijteh ihpen 3 ij iepá ieh 3 ittjij iejkán ittjin iepán ittjijkaFor non-past indicative versions that have more than one form, the second one is from the dialect spoken around Björkfjället and the third is from the Svaipa dialect. The plurality in the other forms is due to parallel forms that are not bound by dialect.
Imperative Optative sg. du. pl. sg. du. pl. 1 - - - 1 alluv iellun iellup allun allup 2 ieleh iellen iellit 2 alluh ielluten ielluteh alluten alluteh 3 - - - 3 allus ielluska ielluseh alluska allusehConsonants
Pite Sami has 22 basic consonant phonemes. Of these, all but the glottal fricative, [h], can occur both short and geminate, bringing the total to 43 if geminate consonants are counted as separate phonemes:
Geminate and preaspirated consonants can only occur word-medially.
Vowels
Pite Sami has nine vowel phonemes. Length is contrastive only among the open vowels.
The close vowels /i/, /u/ are realized as laxer [ɪ], [ʊ] in unstressed positions. Close-mid /e/, /o/ are diphthongized to [ie], [ʊo] when stressed.
Writing system
Pite Sámi is one of the four Sami languages that does not have an official written language. A working orthography has been developed in 2008–2011 by the Sami Association of Arjeplog.