1. Elisabeth Scheller, University of Tromsø Capacity building and revitalization in practice I

2. What should we think about when we want to revitalize a language or to build competency in language revitalization?

3. Understand the language situation

4. What position do I have towards the language community?

5. Insider ? Outsider ?

6. What knowledge do I have? What insight in the community do I have?

7. The whole “context of the language”: 1) -social, cultural, historical and political background of the language community members -the psychology of the people 2) -social, cultural, historical and political background of the dominant population,

8. Different language situations in different parts of Sápmi minority in the minority

9. How is it possible to assess a language situation?

10. Yukagir in Siberia: 1860’s: only some families left who already completely forgot their language and took over the Russian language and the Russian culture

11. 1900: The Yukagir language can disappear completely during some decades. The Yukagir people will disappear as an ethnic group.

12. End of the 1980’s: A majority of the Yukagir people are trilingual Their first language is Yukagir But the next generation will be bilingual with Russian and/or Yakut as their first language

13. ”forgotten” factors: 1. conscious measures to maintain a language 2. misjudging the language situation 3. different understandings of ”dying/disappearing” languages

14. Languages and cultures are not static constant process of changing

15. Language revitalization a by language change endangered language will be saved and maintained for the future a process of many years and several generations a revitalized language will develop and at the same time lose various old elements a revitalized language will get back domains

16. A revitalized language has to find new domains!

17. Language revitalization means bi- / multilingualism

18. Language revitalization begins in the families (at the level of the individuals)

19. Language revitalization means a new variant of the ”old” language

20. How is it possible to find out the language command of the community members?

21. Who speaks Saami in Russia today? The Kola Saami language situation

22. about 2000 Saami in Russia

23. www.hejryssland.se/karta/karta.htm

24. (Mapp from: SKS: 2005)

26. I. SOCIOLINGUISTIC INVESTIGATION

27. 1105 completed questionnaires collected

28. Official national census carried out by the Russian Federation in 2002: ______________________________________ 787 of total 1991 Saami have knowledge in Saami

29. voluntary information and self-identification No information about: spoken varieties and dialects frequency and context of language usage

30. 800 people in Russia with some knowledge of Saami

31. “Knowledge of Saami”

32. 200 POTENTIAL LANGUAGE USERS

33. 100 ACTIVE SPEAKERS

34. The active speakers use Saami: -Naturally -in their everyday life -on all levels of communication

35. SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE USE

36. Symbolic use of Saami: -emphasizing ethnicity or marking the membership in a group - in a public context -as a “show language” for the Saami culture

37. VISIBILITY OF THE LANGUAGE USERS

38. Visible: -language activists -language specialists -people who are engaged in public live (politicians and leaders)

39. Invisible: -majority of active speakers -majority of the potential language users -younger generation -people with a low social status -not ethnical Saami