Yokanga Saami

I. Sociolinguistic data

1. Names of the language

The language is known as Yokanga-Sami (Saami) , Yokanga Sami , Terek Sami ; European Ter Saami . These linguonyms are derived from the name of the Yokanga River or the Tersky Сoast of the White Sea, respectively.

The word used by the native speakers is saam’ kill ‘Saami language’, ethnic self-name sam’m’l’a .

The official name used in government documents or the Constitution: Saami (саамский ) .

Names used previously (exonyms): Lapp language, Lappish, Lopari/Loparski language .

The first census of the Russian Empire of 1897 used the ethnonym “Lapps” ( lopari ) and the linguonym “Lapp language” ( loparski yazyk ). Since the Saami themselves had a negative attitude towards this name, considering it pejorative, from 1937 on they abandoned it in favor of Saami/Sami , and the language began to be called Saami , too (Endyukovsky 1937: 125-126). The academic subject that studied the Saami languages and culture used to be called Lappology . For the reason mentioned above, in the 1970s in academic publications, the term was replaced by Saami studies (Seurujärvi-Kari 2005: 356-357).

In the Soviet and Russian tradition, the Saami variants were considered to constitute a single Saami language with many widely separated dialects. Some Russian authors still use the old terminology. In the European tradition, though, it is generally assumed that there are several Saami languages, and some of them have dialects; recently, Russian linguists have begun to share this view (Agranat 2015). This approach seems justified, since not all Saami languages are mutually intelligible, and mutual understanding is especially difficult between the speakers of the languages that are located far from each other, and even the speakers of the neighboring Kildin and Yokanga are forced to use Russian as a lingua franca for communication (Ruotsala 2005: 162). In addition, the grammatical differences among the Saami languages are very significant.

2. General characteristics

2.1. Number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

According to the census of 2020, the total number of speakers is 259 people, but the census took into account the combined knowledge of all the Saami languages on the territory of the Russian Federation. Of these, the overwhelming majority are speakers of Kildin. Fewer than 10 people of the older generation speak Yokanga, and all of them have a low level of proficiency; they can only be regarded as semi-speakers. In the сensus of 2010, 353 people indicated their knowledge of Saami, i.e. the dynamic is negative. In the second half of the 20th century, Yokanga was spoken in the villages of Yokanga and Chalmny-Varre. Currently, the speakers of Yokanga Saami do not live in their traditional places of settlement, because they were resettled in the process of consolidation of villages. That was the main reason for the loss of the language.

The total number of the Saami, according to the latest census, is 1,530 people (the census of 2010 identified 1,771, thus showing a definite negative trend). The census takes into account all the Saami without dividing them into ethnic groups. In 2010, there were 10 people who regarded themselves as the Yokanga Saami [Scheller 2010].

The traditional occupation of the Saami was reindeer herding, which required a semi-nomadic lifestyle. The Saami roamed in clans with common property and common land use rights. The specificity of reindeer herding was such that they seasonally moved along the meridian: in summer approaching the sea, where they fished, and in winter heading inland. They had winter, summer, spring and autumn camps; sometimes one camp was used for spring and autumn, depending on the distance of the route. The most solid was the winter camp, a winter village, in fact, called siida .  The Kola Saami at some point began to use the Russian borrowing "pogost" (Russian “cemetery”, “churchyard”); a rather peculiar semantic transition.

Every a few years, the camps had to be changed in order to give the reindeer moss a chance to re-grow. The new camps were often given the same tribal names as the abandoned ones.

As a result, it is not always possible to trace the distribution area of a particular dialect, and especially a sub-dialect, with 100% certainty, despite the available materials. The Saami had led a semi-nomadic lifestyle until the beginning of the 20th century, and some even until World War II.

The entire population was engaged in reindeer herding and hunting in winter. “ Our ancestors would move to this winter village when the colds came. The moving period was difficult with small children and old people having to be transported. According to the recollections of my mother, Maria Danilova, it was during such a move that my older brother Alexey caught a cold and died, he was nine months old then .

In the spring, at the end of March or in early April, the entire village population with its property and reindeer moved to the summer camp to engage in fishing in lakes, rivers and the sea.

In 1608, there were 9 yurt wagons and 21 male residents in Yokanga. In 1658, the village was granted as the patrimonial property to the Voskresensky and Krestny monasteries.

According to the census of 1712, in Yokanga there were 10 yurt wagons with 42 people (17 adults, 9 adolescents and 16 children). In 1718 there were 14 yurt wagons with 66 inhabitants…

The Saami district was abolished in 1963. On January 26, 1963, in compliance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR dated December 26, 1962, the collective farm was transferred to the Lovozero district, and the workers' settlement of Gremikha – to the Severomorsk City Council (from “Administrative and territorial division of the Murmansk region”, 1920-1993). So, no collective farm, no district any more. The people were left without a home, language, occupation. Now our village, our Yokanga, has truly become a cemetery in the true sense of this word. Silence and solitude dwell there. A flock of cranes will arrive in the spring, and fly away with a mournful call in the fall. The seagulls will cry, yearning for people. Our Yokanga is a dot on the map of the Kola Peninsula, but in reality what is left is two rickety houses on a hill, two old cemeteries. The forest is overtaking the village, marking the places of our hearths with birches and rowan trees ” [Mironova 2009].

2.2. Age of speakers

The group of speakers is limited to a small number of older people who do not speak the language well.

2.3. Sociolinguistic characteristics.

2.3.1. General characteristics.

2.3.2. Vitality status

1B Disappearing (silent)

There is no regular communication, nor is there any intergenerational transmission.

Currently, the language is virtually unused, being only a subject of academic studies based on the data previously collected from native speakers. The comprehensive documentation is also difficult to achieve because the speakers do not have a very good command of the language.

Information about a writing system (if applicable)

At the moment, the Kola Saami have writing only in the Kildin language. During the language planning stage, in 1926-1927, a written language was created for all the Kola Saami. It was based on Kildin because, firstly, the village of Lovozero was located in the center of the peninsula, and secondly, this language was spoken by a large number of the Saami. However, some features of the Yokanga and Notozero languages were also taken into account. In 1933, the Institute of the Peoples of the North approved a Latin-based alphabet.  Initially, it consisted of 38 letters; later five more characters were added [Endyukovsky 1937: 129].

The Saami alphabet of 1933

The alphabet did not indicate the three degrees of softness. Also, “in order to simplify the spelling system <...> , the length of vowels and consonants <...> is not indicated, although it does have phonemic meaning” [Endyukovsky 1937: 129].

It is this alphabet that Zakhary Chernyakov used to write a primer that took into account the characteristics of all three languages, which is why it turned out to be suitable for none. Then literature began to be published, but only in the Kildin language. However, nowhere in the educational literature was it ever specified that it was written in Kildin, since it had been officially decreed that there was only one Saami language, albeit with various dialects, and that Kildin was only the “basis” of the literary language. In 1934-1935 the “Textbook of arithmetic for primary schools” (parts 1 and 2) by Natalya Popova (translated by Alexander Endyukovsky), “Reader” by Piotr Zhulev, and translations of several books for children were published. In those years, the intention was to create a unified literary Saami language that would include words from different dialects. Yet subsequently, the literature continued to be published only in Kildin.

Teachers of Saami used to be trained at Murmansk Pedagogical College and the Institute of Peoples of the North in Leningrad. In 1937, the activities in the Saami language ceased for administrative and political reasons [Kryuchkova, 2003), and were revived only after the Great Patriotic War.

Some Saami students (Matrekhina (Voronova), Antonova, Zheleznyakova) of the Faculty of the Peoples of the Far North at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, went on folklore expeditions with the Saami language researcher Georgy Kert, who worked in Petrozavodsk. A collection of texts in Kildin and Yokanga with translations into Russian was published with the results.

In the collection, the pronunciation is recorded in a detailed phonetic Finno-Ugric transcription, with the designation of the degree of vowel length, tongue advancement and intensity of pronunciation.  For the consonants, it included the degrees of voicing/devoicing, palatalization, and aspiration. The geminates were indicated by double consonants or by a diacritic [Kert 1961: 188-193].

a - short, back, low-level, dark timbre; Toivo Itkonen defined it as the a of the Finnish type : šuv́val ^d t ʻgoodʼ;

A – the sound a , but unvoiced, very short;

^a - the sound a , very short, but not unvoiced;

a͔ - short, back, low-level, pronounced slightly lower than a ;

a͕ - short, back, low-level, tongue slightly advanced;

ȧ - short, central, low-level; Toivo Itkonen called it middle, between a and ä ;

a - etc.

The poetess Oktyabrina Voronova wrote poetry in Yokanga; unfortunately, almost all of her works were published only as Russian translations, with the exception of the collection “Yalla” [Voronova 1989], where out of 42 pages only half is occupied by Saami poems, the rest being reserved for translations. Her book uses the 1979 Saami Cyrillic alphabet.

In the mid-1970s, Kildin writing system was re-created again. The group (Rimma Kuruch, Alexandra Antonova and Boris Glukhov) developed the Cyrillic Kildin alphabet, which was approved by the Murmansk Regional Council of People's Deputies in 1979.

The Saami alphabet of 1979.

Аа       ä          Бб       Вв       Гг        Дд       Ее        Ёё        Жж     Зз        Ии            Йй                   Кк       Лл       ӆ          Мм      ӎ         Нн       ӊ          ӈ          Оо            ö          Пп       Рр        ҏ          Сс       Тт        Уу       ӱ          Фф      Хх       Цц            Чч       Шш     ъ          Ыы      ӹ         ь          ҍ          Ээ       ӭ          Юю     Яя

This alphabet introduced the back-lingual nasal sonant ӈ and the “voiceless sonants” ӆ ӎ ӊ ҏ . The soft sign ҍ is used to indicate the semi-softness of a consonant.

The long (geminated) consonants were designated by double letters. The vowel length was indicated by a macron: ā, ē, ō, е̄, я̄, ӣ, ё̄ . The vowels with an umlaut were also added: ä Ё ӧ ӱ ӹ ӭ , showing the semi-softness of the preceding consonant. Of these vowels, only Ё , which is possible in the word-initial position, is pronounced as [ yo ] with yod.

The academic description of the phonetics and morphology of Yokanga Saami was carried out by Sergei Tereshkin. He completed his graduate studies under Georgy Kert and defended the dissertation “The Yokanga dialect of the Saami language” [Tereshkin 2002]. He employed the same Finno-Ugric transcription (with some simplifications) that Georgy Kert used in his notes [Kert 1961; Tereshkin 2002: 36]: 7 letters for single vowel phonemes and 4 phonological long pairs for high and low-level vowels indicated by double letters. The diphthongs and triphthongs are also shown as vowel sequences.

27 letters are used to designate the consonants, to which the softness sign can be added. Each consonant, except for the voiceless sonant / n̥ /, has a palatalized pair.

The soft affricates c’ and ʒ’ do not have hard pairs. The gemination also covers all consonants, with the exception of the voiced front-linguals z, z’, ž, ž’ , and is indicated by double consonants (for phonematic tables, see II.4 Information on phonetics).

Nina Mironova, whose materials are used in this description, uses the standard Russian alphabet, without indicating her specifically Saami pronunciation.

3. Geographical characteristics

3.1. Constituent entities of the Russian Federation with ethnic communities

The Murmansk region

3.2. Total number of native settlements

Initially, the speakers lived in the villages of Yokanga and Chalmny-Varre, Murmansk region. Nina Mironova wrote in her memoir: “ After the abolition of the Saami district in 1963, reindeer grazing land and salmon streams were taken away from the native inhabitants, and at the end of the 1960s, during the consolidation of collective farms, the Yokanga village (Gremikha) was abandoned by people of traditional occupations. Many have left for Umba, Prichalnoe, and Murmansk, for good ”.

In the 1960s, the entire population of the village of Chalmny-Varre was moved to the village of Krasnoshchelye, which lies higher up the Ponoy, due to the planned construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Ponoy and subsequent flooding of the village (the plans never came to fruition). The mixing of the Yokanga-speaking residents with a large number of Russians naturally led to a gradual disappearance of Yokanga Saami; in the 1980s it was already difficult to find a qualified native speaker [Tereshkin, 2002: 5].

It is impossible to determine exactly how the speakers of the Saami languages are numerically distributed in the settlements. The largest number live in Lovozero, and at the moment almost all of them are speakers of Kildin. Speakers of other Saami languages, including Yokanga, moved there, and a melting-pot effect ensued.

The transition to Kildin took place due to the fact that only this dialect was taught at school and used on the radio, in book publishing, and other areas. In the cities, especially Murmansk, there are speakers of all the Kola Saami languages.

4. Historical dynamics

The Yokanga village, along with the other settlements of the Eastern Saami (Babino and Notozero), has been known since the 16th century [Alymov 1927: 9]. To this day, Russian censuses indicate the total number of all the Saami, regardless of ethnic and linguistic affiliation, and count all the Saami languages as one.

In recent decades, what has remained of the total number of the Saami are some speakers of Kildin and very few – of the other Saami languages. The total number of the Russian Saami remained almost unchanged (in the past this was due to the fact that in such climatic conditions it was impossible for more people to survive; any increase in population would bring in epidemics and the population returned to its previous size).

During the years of the first censuses, the size of the ethnic group actually matched the number of speakers of the language. It is important to note that the ratio of speakers of different Saami languages on the Kola Peninsula in the second half of the 20 ^th century was redistributed; it is known that the disappearance of the Babinsky language was brought about by Kildin becoming a school subject. Yokanga Saami was not formally taught, either.

1. Position in the genealogy of the world languages

Uralic family > Finno-Ugric branch > Saami group > Eastern Saami subgroup

2. Dialectal situation

The Russian academic tradition used to consider Saami as one language with many dialects. Now it recognizes the existence of several Saami languages. However, it is currently impossible to talk about the dialectal fragmentation of Yokanga Saami, since the number of speakers is negligible. Nor can we comment on the situation of the previous years due to a poor documentation of the language.