RE: Sami

From: jarkko.hietaniemi@nokia.com
Date: Mon Feb 18 2002 - 12:45:08 EST


> Most Samis live in Norway. In Norway, the Germanic language there
> borrowed the word Sápmi, Sámi, as "same" with an adjective "samisk".
> In Finland, where there are not very many Sami speakers compared to
> Norway, particular orthographic practices of that language write long
> vowels with double letters, hence "saami".

I don't know how much the relative number of Sami speakers in Finland contributed to
the spelling; my guess is that the "long vowel -> double vowel" rule was much stronger
in this case. Any kind of diacritics very rarely survive when words are "finnishized"
(made to agree with Finnish ortography) (In fact, I can't think of any examples right
now where the diacritics would survive, but I'm certain there are counterexamples...)



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