This time in Language Day we concentrate on just one single language - as opposed to the usual multilingual theme we have here. This language is the Skolt Sami language. It is one of the many Sami languages spoken in the northern parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway, and all of them belong to the Uralic language group.
Year 2019 is - among other things - the International Year of Indigenous Languages that are spoken by millions of people around the world.
But why write about the Skolt Sami language spoken by a mere 400 people (if not even that many) - in Northernmost Finland and a tiny part of Russia, and earlier in parts of Norway as well?
Well, it so happens that the past week was the Sami language celebration week here in Finland - part of the aforementioned International Year of Indigenous Languages.
Also, the film Frozen 2 soon in the cinemas is the first movie that has been dubbed into Skolt Sami. You can imagine how thrilled this tiny group of people are of course, being able to take their kids to movies to see a children’s movie in their own language!
The International Year of Indigenous Languages is also recognized by BBC. They have in fact nominated the translator of the film, Sara Wesslin, among the 100 most influential women in the world this year for her painstaking efforts to improve the circumstances for Skolt-Sami.
She speaks the language of course, but not since birth. She only got interested in it learning about her own background, and has since then fought for the right to study the indigenous languages in the Finnish school system, and for their use elsewhere in society. Her father didn’t speak Skolt-Sami, being part of the generation that all the Nordic countries tried to force to adopt the majority language as their primary means of communication. But now Sara Wesslin, and others with her, can converse with her/their grandparents in their own language. The circle has closed, and keeps growing.
Read below about the making of Frozen 2, and how it was influenced by the authentic Sami culture.