The Sámi L anguage Situation

The article presents an overview of the Sámi language situation in Russia. In Russia there are or used to be found four Kola Sámi lan-guages (Kildin Sámi, Ter Sámi, Skolt Sámi and Akkala Sámi), plus a newcomer, North Sámi, which has been used by some Kola Sámi community members since the 1990s. Today, all four Kola Sámi lan-guages are seriously threatened by a language shift from Sámi to Rus-sian. However, a revitalisation process in respect to Kildin Sámi is currently occurring. The present article starts with a general introduc-tion to the Sámi, who are one of the indigenous minority peoples in the Russian Federation. After that, sources of data will be presented and categories of language competence, categories of language users, their numbers and their visibility inside and outside the language community will be discussed. The fi gures for Sámi language users in Russia are presented in a table below. A description of the actual Sámi language situation(s) in Russia, describing each language variation separately, follows. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the language situation with regard to the potential for language revitalisation, which is the main focus of the article