Native to Russia Writing system no writing system Glottolog ters1235 | Native speakers 2 (2010) ISO 639-3 sjt | |
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Language family Uralic
Sami
Eastern Sami
Ter Sami | ||
Ter Sami is the easternmost of the Sami languages. It was traditionally spoken in the northeastern part of the Kola Peninsula, but now it is a moribund language; in 2004, only ten speakers were left. By 2010, the number of speakers had decreased to two.
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History
In the end of the 19th century, there were six Ter Sami villages in the eastern part of the Kola Peninsula, with a total population of approximately 450. In 2004, there were approximately 100 ethnic Ter Sami of whom two elderly persons speak the language; the rest have shifted their language to Russian.
The rapid decline in the number of speakers was caused by Soviet collectivisation, during which its use was prohibited in schools and homes in the 1930s, and the largest Ter Sami village, Yokanga, was declared "perspectiveless" and its inhabitants were forced to move to the Gremikha military base.
Documentation
There are no educational materials or facilities in Ter Sami, and the language has no standardized orthography. The language is incompletely studied and documented; text specimens, audio recordings as well as dictionaries for linguistic purposes exist, but no grammatical description is available.
The earliest known documentation of Sami languages is a short Ter Sami vocabulary collected by the British explorer Stephen Burrough in 1557; the vocabulary was published by Richard Hakluyt.