Northern Sámi IPA module

Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Rua
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I was not aware of the syllabification of <st>. Are there any other consonant clusters that behave that way?

In general I've had some difficulty finding detailed sources on Northern Sami phonology, which is why the template only describes the Kautokeino dialect. That's the only one described by a source I could find. If you know more, the Wikipedia article about Northern Sami could definitely do with some love.

Rua (mew)14:22, 8 July 2024

The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages, chapter 10 "North Sami" (https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198767664.003.0010), is the most detailed work on Northern Sámi phonology I've found, but it is not entirely comprehensive (e.g. very little about glide vowels (they call them "subglottal pulses"), nothing about preglottalised nasals, no analysis of coastal dialects or Torne dialects, etc.), but it still covers a lot. Another comprehensive work is "An analysis of North Saami gradation" in the journal Phonology (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675712000115), though it is mostly about the phonetic realization of consonant grades. My technical understanding comes mostly from the first work with an additional splattering of works to fill in some gaps, including "Samisk grammatikk" by Klaus Peter Nickel (ISBN 82-7374-201-6). "The Saami languages : an introduction" by Pekka Sammallahti (ISBN 82-7374-398-5) also goes into great detail on pronunciation, though it does use the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet instead of the IPA.

Also, it seems I was partially incorrect in my comment on the consonant cluster <st>; the consonant clusters <sk>, <šk> and <st> are optionally split at syllable boundaries, or appear entirely after them (e.g. either jienas-tit or jiena-stit). When they are part of the beginning of compound words, they will always come after (e.g. čála-standárda). The clusters <bm>, <dn>, <dnj> and <gŋ> always appear after the syllable boundary when they come after another consonant (e.g. vuoi-gŋa, bár-dni, fier-bmi), per "Samisk grammatikk", p. 33-34. The last ones are unlikely to come up, as I don't think they can ever appear between feet.

ArcticSeeress (talk)15:26, 8 July 2024