Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7170 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 33 of 541 07 July 2011 at 5:02am | IP Logged |
I have completed Chapter 1 and was introduced to the conjugation in present tense singular of the verb "to be", and the concept of cases in Inari Saami. No mention about the alphabet or how to pronounce words (a search on Wikipedia reveals that the phonetic values of much of the alphabet of Inari Saami are the same as that of Karelian. Đđ is pronounced as in English "th-" in "the" and there are particular rules that deal with the use of Áá).
1) The conjugation of "to be" (leđe) in present tense
mun lam "I am"
tun lah "you are"
sun lii "he/she is"
Using the personal pronouns is not always required because the verb forms themselves make it clear enough who the subject is.
2) The notes also introduced the nominative and accusative/genitive.
Other cases will be shown later. For some words, the form for genitive/accusative singular is identical to that of the nominative singular while for others it differs. There's no mention yet on how to determine which words have distinct forms or identical ones (this is starting to sound a bit like Estonian where there also doesn't seem to be any reliable rule to figure out which word declines so that the form in nominative singular is different from that in accusative/genitive singular).
A problem that I encountered when doing the exercises was that some of the questions assumed knowledge of concepts introduced in later chapters (e.g. the exercise on listing case forms for pronouns ignores the fact that the forms in accusative singular and genitive singular are distinct rather than identical as with other nouns).
Vocabulary of chapter 1
For nouns, the first entry is in nom. sing., the second one in acc./gen. sing.
For verbs, the first entry is in the infinitive, the second one in present tense for 1st person singular
Ánná, Ááná - "Anna"
Elli, Eeli - "Elli"
já - "and"
kandâ, kaandâ - "boy"
kii - "who"
leđe, lam - "to be"
lovos, lohhoos - "chapter"
Matti, Maati - "Matti"
mii - "what"
mun - "I"
muu - "my"
nieidâ, nieidâ - "girl"
nommâ, noomâ - "name"
Pierâ, Pierâ - "Pierâ"
pärni, päärni - "boy" (alternative to "kandâ?")
sun - "he/she"
suu - "his/her"
sääni, sääni - "word"
taa lii - "here is...", "this is..." (referring to someone who has not yet been mentioned)
tot lii - "this is..." (referring to someone who has already been mentioned?)
tun - "you" (singular)
tuu - "your"
Examples of Inari Saami taken from my answers to the exercises.
1. Kii tun lah? Mun lam Chung.
2. Kii mun lam? Tun lah Chung.
3. Kii sun lii? Sun lii Matti.
4. Kii taa lii? Taa lii Elli.
5. Mii tuu nommâ lii? Muu nommâ lii Chung.
6. Mii muu nommâ lii? Tuu nommâ lii Chung.
7. Mii suu nommâ lii? Suu nommâ lii Chung.
8. Mii nieidâ nommâ lii? Suu nommâ lii Elli.
9. Mii kaandâ nommâ lii? Suu nommâ lii Pierâ.
10. Kii taa lii? Tot lii nieidâ.
11. Mii suu nommâ lii? Suu nommâ lii Ánná.
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Kafea Groupie United States Joined 4946 days ago 78 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Smi
| Message 34 of 541 07 July 2011 at 6:38am | IP Logged |
Yes, my Davvin 1 has assumed that I know things too. Mine is in North Sámi. For instance, one of the first greetings is, "Gii bo boata?" I am left to figure out that this means gii=how, boata=come. How do you come? How are you? Another one is "Gii do boahtá de?" (de, dat) important words which were not explained in the first few lessons.
And they never say that nieida is a young girl. But I already know anyway.
Thank you for the suggestion to study a bit of Finnish grammar to figure out the genetive and nominative. I still do not get that at all. That is pretty key to it. Thank you for putting the questions and answers here. I have heard these before.
I thought Inari uses Cyrillic alphabet? And I am wrong, that is Kildin. This whole time I thought so. You certainly have more vowels in Inari. One major question I have is, does the J make a "Y" sound or a "CH" sound? North Sámi has no "Y" so this is confusing me. Do you have access to a child's program that would review the alphabet sounds? That would sure be helpful.
Northern Sami orthography (from Wikipedia)
Northern Sami has a long orthographic history, which has witnessed no less than 9 different versions. The most recent version was approved in 1979 and last modified in 1985:
А а Á á B b C c Č č D d Đ đ E e
F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m
N n Ŋ ŋ O o P p R r S s Š š T t
Ŧ ŧ U u V v Z z Ž ž
(I have seen one more letter, the hook on the extra n that goes down on the left side makes a gentler unvoiced sound than the n with a hook on the right side, voiced "ng". Please correct me if I am wrong.)
Inari
The following alphabet for Inari Sami was approved in 1996. (Wikipedia again)
А а Â â B b C c Č č D d Đ đ E e
F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m
N n O o P p (Q q) R r S s Š š T t
U u V v (W w) (X x) Y y Z z Ž ž Ä ä
Á á Å å Ö ö
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Kafea Groupie United States Joined 4946 days ago 78 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Smi
| Message 35 of 541 07 July 2011 at 8:56am | IP Logged |
I found some interesting links to Inari on Árran website!
Árran
Thanks for the links to the two little books!
Edited by Kafea on 07 July 2011 at 10:02am
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7170 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 36 of 541 07 July 2011 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
Kafea wrote:
One major question I have is, does the J make a "Y" sound or a "CH" sound? North Sámi has no "Y" so this is confusing me. Do you have access to a child's program that would review the alphabet sounds? That would sure be helpful. |
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Based on the lists of Saamic alphabets at Omniglot, Inari Saami's "j" sounds like the English "y" in "yes". However its "y" sounds like the Scottish pronunciation of -oo- in "boot" or the Australian pronunciation of -oo- in "food".
Kafea wrote:
I found some interesting links to Inari on Árran website!
Árran
Thanks for the links to the two little books! |
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Thanks and you're welcome.
Davvi Girji also has a link to a collection of literary texts, exercises and recordings in Northern Saami at Fárru. Click here for the section with texts and recordings (not all texts have audio).
Unfortunately as I've found to my dismay, many of Árran's links are dead.
However I've just stumbled upon a website in Inari Saami only which includes a link to a big collection of learning/reference material for Inari Saami using Finnish as the intermediary language. This collection is part of peda.net which is associated with the Institute of Educational Research at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland).
As I've alluded to earlier, it would be even better if I could find some structured recordings to learn how to understand aurally and speak some Inari Saami (so far I have such audio material but it's in Northern Saami only since it's from Davvin's CDs). Radio broadcasts in Inari Saami from YLE (Finnish national broadcaster) and the occasional clip on YouTube aren't all that helpful for a beginner when there are no transcripts.
In any case, I'm liking my chances with learning this language more and more after picking up this new material from peda.net. Thank God that I'm learning Finnish too otherwise learning anything more than a random phrase or word of Inari Saami would've been a non-starter.
In your case, you may do well to learn not only a bit of Finnish (for which there are plenty of free materials on-line meant for English-speakers) to get familiar with some concepts in Saamic grammar, but also think about picking up enough Norwegian (or even Danish or Swedish) so that you can get make sense of the Norwegian-only instructions and explanations in learning resources for Northern Saami. As you can see in my recent trawling for information on Saamic, there's a fair bit of stuff made for Norwegians.
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Kafea Groupie United States Joined 4946 days ago 78 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Smi
| Message 37 of 541 07 July 2011 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
Great! Thanks! This alphabet site is one I bookmark for typing. But there are keyboards and Moses on YouTube shows how to put the keyboards on the desktop for easier typing. At this point I guess we should do that.
Thanks for the stuff you have shared, it is great material and I've already spent several happy hours. My Swedish or Norwegian are only very rudimentary; you are right, it would be helpful.
My favorite Inari audible material includes Amoc's raps, and Somby (I think it is "Ii Iđit Vel", but YouTube spells it "Li Idit Vel"). I think Angelit are also Inari, and there is a new group offshoot from them (I think). YouTube and MP3 song downloads from Amazon have a few things but they can be hard to find. The emphasis is pretty much on the first syllable of each word. Using wordlists it has taken awhile to figure that the pronunciations are different than the spellings of the words. I am not sure if they actually talk that fast, or if Amoc is just really fast?
Thank you so much for clearing up the "j" question. I think they skip over the "g" as well.
Edited by Kafea on 07 July 2011 at 8:56pm
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7170 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 38 of 541 08 July 2011 at 5:03am | IP Logged |
Jackpot.
I've found a basic course in Inari Saami in that collection of links that I had mentioned earlier today. The best part for me is that it comes with audio (in .mp3) and exercises to go with the textbook (in .pdf and .rtf formats). At last I can now start getting a better idea of how to pronounce this language!
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Kafea Groupie United States Joined 4946 days ago 78 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Smi
| Message 39 of 541 08 July 2011 at 6:16am | IP Logged |
Giella Tekno
Here is a good site. The University of Tromsø has courses for people who live there, but also this online material. There is some for anársámegiella, and this is the same site where I found keyboards to open, sorry but it is here somewhere. It's a big website. If I find it first I'll edit this post and put the address here.
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Kafea Groupie United States Joined 4946 days ago 78 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Smi
| Message 40 of 541 08 July 2011 at 6:52am | IP Logged |
Jiella
This group sings in Inari. It looks like Slincraze is also Inari.
Radio and TV link for Sámi radio and TV-ođđasat
Edited by Kafea on 08 July 2011 at 7:16am
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