Alphabet and pronunciation – Intro

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On the page Alphabet you can find a list of all Skolt Sámi letters and you can listen to the general pronunciation of each letter. On the following pages, the pronunciation of each letter for vowels, consonants and other letter-like characters is explained with the help of example words.

Remember that the pronunciation of some letters in Skolt Sámi are different than in English. Furthermore there are several letters which English does not have. Apart from that, Skolt Sámi orthography is relatively close to the actual pronunciation. Therefore, only in a few cases do we need to use a kind of simplified transcription. These are the forms written in between two slashes / … /. Our simplified transcription should only give you a general impression of the pronunciation of the respective letter, but does not show the actual Skolt Sámi orthography!

Our materials comply with the orthography used officially in Finland. The same norm is now also used in Norway and Russia.

Please note that our explanations are written for students without special knowledge in phonology. We only compare the Skolt Sámi pronunciation with Norwegian and Russian and in some cases with other languages in order to create easily comprehensible explanations. Better phonological descriptions can be found in the following sources:

Feist, T. 2010: A grammar of Skolt Saami. Manchester.
Korhonen, M. / Mosnikoff / Sammallahti, P. 1973: Koltansaamen opas. Helsinki
Moshnikoff, S. / Moshnikoff J. / Koponen, E. 2009: Koltansaamen koulukielioppi. Inari.

Remember that stress normally falls on the first syllable in Skolt Sámi, just like in other Sámi languages or in Finnish.