The Northern Sami Alphabet

Northern Sami (Davvisámegiella) is the most widely spoken Sami language ^[1], with approximately 25,000 speakers across northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It is the official Sami language of Sami institutions across Sápmi — the traditional homeland of the Sami indigenous people of northern Scandinavia.

Northern Sami is co-official with Norwegian in designated Sámi administrative municipalities in Norway, giving speakers the right to use it in public administration, courts, and schools. It is recognised as a minority language in Sweden and Finland and is taught in schools across the Sápmi region.

Northern Sami has six unique letters ^[2] not found in English: Á (open back vowel), Č (ch-sound), Đ (voiced dental fricative, as in "the"), Ŋ (velar nasal, ng-sound), Š (sh-sound), and Ž (zh-sound). These represent sounds absent from Norwegian, Swedish, and English alphabets.

The most visually striking is Ŋ (eng) — a letter used in relatively few world writing systems, though it represents the final consonant in words like English "sing" and "ring". In Northern Sami, Ŋ can appear word-initially and medially as well as finally, unlike the positional restriction it has in English phonology.

Northern Sami has approximately 25,000 speakers ^[1], making it by far the largest Sami language — the next largest, Southern Sami, has only about 500 speakers. The largest Northern Sami speaking community is in Finnmark county of northern Norway, with significant communities also in Troms, Nordland, and the Sami areas of Sweden and Finland.

Northern Sami is the only Sami language considered to have a stable or growing speaker community in recent decades. Revitalisation efforts — including Sami-medium schooling, Sami-language broadcasting on NRK Sápmi and Yle Sápmi, and the political work of the Sami Parliaments — have helped stabilise the language after severe declines earlier in the 20th century.

Northern Sami is spoken across Sápmi ^[3] — the traditional homeland of the Sami people spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The greatest concentration of Northern Sami speakers is in northern Norway, particularly in Finnmark county and the municipalities of Kautokeino and Karasjok.

In Norway, Northern Sami has co-official status with Norwegian in Sámi administrative municipalities. In Sweden, it is recognised in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Arvidsjaur, Berg, Härjedalen, Jokkmokk, Krokom, Malå, Sorsele, Storuman, Vilhelmina, Åre, and Östersund. In Finland, it is recognised in the municipalities of Inari, Utsjoki, Enontekiö, and Sodankylä.

The unified Northern Sami orthography was adopted in 1979 ^[3] and revised in 1985, following years of collaborative work by Sami linguists and language authorities from Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Before 1979, the three countries used separate orthographic systems for the same language.

The 1979 standardisation was a breakthrough for Sami language planning — a single orthography enabled the production of shared textbooks, dictionaries, and literature usable across borders. The revised 1985 orthography introduced minor adjustments and has remained the standard since, maintained jointly by the Sami language institutions of all three countries including Sámediggi (Sami Parliament of Norway).

Northern Sami belongs to the Samic branch of the Uralic language family ^[1]. The Uralic family includes Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and numerous other languages across northern Eurasia. Within Uralic, the Samic languages are most closely related to the Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc.) as members of the Finno-Samic subgroup.

The Samic languages are not related to Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) despite the geographic proximity — those are Indo-European. Northern Sami shares with Finnish agglutinative morphology, a rich case system, and consonant gradation inherited from Proto-Uralic. However, Samic diverged from Finnic roughly 2,000–3,000 years ago, producing substantial differences in vocabulary and phonology.

The ISO 639-3 code for Northern Sami is sme ^[2]. ISO 639-3 is the international standard for identifying individual human languages, maintained by SIL International. The code sme uniquely identifies Northern Sami across all databases and platforms using ISO language codes.

In Glottolog, Northern Sami is classified under the Samic branch of Uralic. The code sme is used in language databases, digital platforms, and minority language legal frameworks across Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The Sámediggi (Sami Parliament of Norway) ^[3] is the principal authority for Northern Sami language policy and standardisation in Norway.

Northern Sami is classified as vulnerable by UNESCO — it is the strongest and most widely spoken Sami language, with approximately 25,000 speakers ^[2] across Norway, Sweden, and Finland. This makes it far healthier than most other Sami languages (Southern Sami has ~600 speakers; Skolt Sami fewer than 300). However, even Northern Sami faces pressure from the dominant national languages of its three host countries.

Revitalisation efforts are actively supported by the Sámediggi (Sami Parliament of Norway) ^[3], which funds Northern Sami media, education, and language programs in Sami municipalities. Northern Sami has official status in a number of Norwegian municipalities, is taught in Sami schools, and has a presence in broadcasting. These protections give Northern Sami a stronger foundation than other Sami languages, though urban migration and language shift remain ongoing challenges.

The Sami languages form a branch of Uralic with approximately 10 distinct varieties ^[1], ranging from Northern Sami in the north to Southern Sami in the south. They are not mutually intelligible — a Northern Sami speaker cannot understand Southern Sami without study. Northern Sami is the largest variety (~25,000 speakers), while Lule Sami, Inari Sami, Southern Sami, and Skolt Sami each have smaller communities.

Northern Sami is distinctive among Sami languages for its 6 unique letters: Á, Č, Đ, Ŋ, Š, Ž ^[3]. Other Sami languages have different orthographic conventions matching their own phonological systems. For example, Skolt Sami has more complex special characters while Southern Sami uses fewer. The Northern Sami alphabet, standardised in 1979, has become the de facto reference point for Sami orthographic discussions given Northern Sami's dominant position as the largest and most resourced Sami language.