Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 1 of 12 22 December 2009 at 11:17pm | IP Logged |
Hello,
As a longer-term plan, I may end up studying one of the Lappish languages. I've been increasingly attracted to them from a philological point of view as I am currently studying Finnish and have already learned some Estonian and Hungarian.
I have noticed that there are few usable resources on a Lappish language in English, but somewhat more and better ones in Norwegian and Swedish. Thus I have been lately considering that I should learn either Norwegian or Swedish as a prerequisite to learning a Lappish language.
At the same time, I'm not terribly interested in any of the Northern Germanic languages on their own and would be satisfied if I could learn enough Norwegian or Swedish just for reading knowledge. This would be a first for me since whenever I've learned a language independently, I've adhered to the idea that I learn to use the target language actively and passively.
What kind of ideas do you have about my learning Norwegian or Swedish primarily for reading comprehension? I'm browsing FSI Swedish but I'm not sure if it would be the most suitable course for my purpose.
Thanks,
Chung
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 12 23 December 2009 at 1:02am | IP Logged |
For reading comprehension I'd recommend L-R. Doviende is working on Swedish at the moment:
Doviende's Swedish log
Maybe there something that you've read in English or French (or another of your languages) that's also available as a Swedish audiobook.
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davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5528 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin
| Message 3 of 12 24 December 2009 at 12:52am | IP Logged |
My impression is that there are more resources available in Norwegian than Swedish for learning Northern Sámi. There are online courses in Swedish, but I haven't been able to find any Sámi-Swedish dictionaries. There are substantial Norwegian-Sámi and Sámi-Norwegian dictionaries, as well as a series of four textbooks (Davvi 1-4).
I think there are quite a few resources available in Finnish though, if you're learning Finnish anyway. Pekka Sammallahti is a Professor of Sámi languages at the University of Oulu, and has published Sámi-Finnish dictionaries for Northern, Kolt and Inari Sámi.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 12 24 December 2009 at 8:44pm | IP Logged |
Olavi Korhonen has written quite a lot on Sámi, e.g. "Samisk-svensk/svensk-samisk ordbok" (availabe at a few libraries here in Sweden):
http://libris.kb.se/hitlist?d=libris&m=&p=1&f=&q=olavi%20kor honen&hist=true&spell=spelled (Swedish link)
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cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 5 of 12 24 December 2009 at 10:11pm | IP Logged |
Call me ignorant but is there actually any literature in Sami language(s) that doesn't also exist in one of the other Nordic languages? I have never heard of any original litterature written in Sami and as far as I know they did not actually even have a written language until well into the 20th century, after they were (in a rather insensitive way) made to integrate with society at large.
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davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5528 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin
| Message 6 of 12 28 December 2009 at 1:38pm | IP Logged |
cordelia0507 wrote:
Call me ignorant but is there actually any literature in Sami language(s) that doesn't also exist in one of the other Nordic languages? I have never heard of any original litterature written in Sami and as far as I know they did not actually even have a written language until well into the 20th century, after they were (in a rather insensitive way) made to integrate with society at large. |
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I've only just started learning Sámi, so I don't know all that much about Sámi literature. I did discover a Sámi poet, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, whose work won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1991. His work is available in translation of course, but reading literature in translation's not really quite the same...
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cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5837 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 7 of 12 28 December 2009 at 2:35pm | IP Logged |
Impressed David! I had forgotten about him. I know about him but have never read anything by him.
if you find that his work is inspiring enough to motivate you to learn, then good on you! Lord knows these languages need all the support they can get to survive.
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 8 of 12 28 December 2009 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
I find it very interesting that people are learning minority languages such as Sámi or Navajo, I would even say it makes me curious and I find it inspiring.
With other life circumstances I would also like to learn such a language as well, but there not many resources at all, and those available will be expensive. I have to stick to more common languages like Danish.
In any I will read with great interest about people's experiences studying such languages. For example I went to a lecture of our local Volkshochschule (VHS) about the Sámi people in Northern Finnland, Sweden and Norway.
So I hope that, Chung and David, you will find sufficient and good quality resources for this study endeavour. Good luck! Godt succes!
Fasulye
Edited by Fasulye on 28 December 2009 at 8:52pm
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