Pite Sami documentation project

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

Pite Saami (also known as Arjeplog Saami) is one of around ten Saami languages (Finno-Ugric). It is spoken in the northern Swedish municipality of Arjeplog and has suffered severely under the dominance of North Germanic language and culture, resulting in its acute endangerment: there are currently only around 20 speakers in Sweden, and no speakers in adjacent Pite territory in Norway. In addition to recording Pite speech, the project aims to create a modern Pite-Swedish-Pite dictionary, an accompanying English word-list and a sketch grammar reflecting current Pite usage. The resulting data will also be used to complete a dissertation on morphophonological alternations in Pite Saami. Primary investigator: Joshua Wilbur

Project Details


Location: Sweden, Northern Europe, Europe Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £43,148.00 Commencement Date: 01/2004
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