Project Office for Arctic Development awards grant for research on the Sami language

• 22.04.2022
• 663

Researchers will carry fieldwork in Lovozero, where the biggest Sami settlement in Murmansk Region is located. Viktoria Bakula (Advanced Doctor in Philology), Anastasia Koreneva (Advanced Doctor in Pedagogy), and Tatiana Rychkova (Ph.D. of Philology) made the project team.

‘We plan to establish the number of Sami native speakers and determine their language proficiency within the research. We also want to know why native speakers believe that it is important to learn the language, whether they use it in daily life and how popular the language is within the community,' said Tatiana Rychkova. ‘Moreover, the survey results can help us to compile the Sami media profile for the future language promotion.'

The project team will publish the overall results of the research and make them available for the scientific community and the Sami people.

Lately, Philology, Media and Communications Department received the Potanin Foundation's grant for designing the programme of the Sami language preservation. Sami language training, another Master programme created within the grant, will help to prepare staff for revitalizing the Sami language, as it is an endangered one. The International Conference ‘The Preservation of the Sami Language in Modern Conditions', which took place in MASU last autumn, led up to these projects. The participants of the Conference highlighted the need for synchronized efforts and consolidation in order to preserve the Sami language.