V. B. BAKULA (Murmansk, Russia). Problems of formation of literary language of the Kola Saami

The article analyzes the stages of the creation of the Saami’s writing from the end of the XIX century and the reasons for the lack of literary language of the Kola Sami. Currently, there are four versions of the Sami alphabet based on Cyrillic graphics presented in the educational literature. The analysis of the existing graphic systems and the literature based on them showed that only the alphabet of 1979 fulfills the conditions of the main stages of the formation of a written standard language.
With the help of comparative historical and problem-chronological methods, the author considers an array of archival data, as well as research works and works of art in the Sami language.
Currently, a serious basis has been created for the development of the Sami literary language, but there are a number of problems that hinder the solution of this problem. Among them there are the following: in the territory of the Murmansk region there are no research and academic organizations involved in the development of a single standard of the Sami language; Murmansk region is not a republic, therefore it does not have the right to prove the graphical basis of the alphabet of a language, which is not the state language of a subject of the Russian Federation; in the Murmansk region there is no legal act on the language of the indigenous minorities of the North, with the official written standard of the Sami language recorded, therefore today they still use the standard variant dated 1979 and its version with h and ј in parallel.
The Sami language has not been in demand for a long time among the Sami and at the state level, which resulted in the absence of TV programs and press in the Sami language as well as radio broadcasting limited to a short time. The assimilation of the Sami language into Russian continues, the use of the Sami language by native speakers occurs mainly only at the household level, there are problems with the teaching of the language at school (only optional), among the young generation the native language of the Sami is not in demand. All these factors do not contribute to the formation of the Sami literary language. Urgent measures are needed to unify the graphic system of the Sami language, to organize competent educational activities in educational institutions in order to preserve and develop the language of the indigenous minority people.

Key words: Sami; writing; alphabet; literary language; written standard.

For citation: Bakula VB. Problems of formation of literary language of the Kola Saami. Finno-ugorskii mir = Finno-Ugric World. 2018; 3: 13–22. (In Russian)