Sami languages

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The Sami languages are languages from the Finno-Ugric languages group, spoken by the Sami people of Sapmi. It is since april 1 2002 one of the five minority languages officially recognized in Sweden, and are domestic language especially in Arjeplog, [[G�llivare]], Jokkmokk and Kiruna municipalities.

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In 2001 there were around ten known Sami languages. Six of these have a standard written language, the four others are literally not in use – i.e. there are fewer than 100 people that speak them. The six written languages are:

Northern Sami (Norway, Sweden, Finland)
This accounts for probably more than 75% of all Sami speakers in 2002. There have been a number of grammars for this dialect, but in 1948 a common grammar was created, and was last modified in 1985. It uses seven characters not found in Scandinavian or Finnish:
- a-acute (�/�)
- c-caron (Č/č)
- d-stroke (Đ/đ)
- eng (Ŋ/ŋ)
- s-caron (Š/š)
- t-stroke (Ŧ/ŧ)
- z-caron (Ž/ž)

Lule Sami (Norway, Sweden)
Common grammar but with fewer special characters (only a-acute and n-acute). The character n-acute (Ń/ń) is the eng sound found in the Norwegian word "sang". Instead of n-acute (found in Unicode, but not in ASCII), many use � or even ng.

Southern Sami (Norway, Sweden)
Written using Norwegian or Swedish characters, some variants of Swedish or Norwegian � and �.

Inari Sami (Enare Sami) (Inari, Finland)
This dialect uses seven special characters.
SIL code: LPI, ISO 639-2: smi

Skolt Sami (N��t�m� and the Nellim-Kev�j�rvi districts, Inari municipality, Finland, also spoken in Russia, previously in Norway; Skolts were resettled to Inari from the Petsamo area after its annexation by the Soviet Union)
SIL code: LPK, ISO 639-2: smi

Kildin Sami (Kildin Island, Russia)
Uses cyrillic typesetting, Russian characters with some special characters.
SIL code: LPD, ISO 639-2: smi

The remaining living 4 Sami languages have very few speakers and are in danger of extinction. It is believed that they have fewer than 500 speakers combined. They are Akkala (Babino) Sami, Ter Sami, Pite Sami and Ume Sami. Another Sami language, Kemi Sami, has been extinct for over 100 years.