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The Saami Languages: the present and the future

The Saami languages are Fenno-Ugrian languages spoken from central Sweden and Mid-Southern Norway to the tip of the Kola Peninsula in Russia by 25,000-35,000 speakers. The number of ethnic Saami is probably nearly 100,000. There are no deep linguistic boundaries within the language area between neighbouring dialects, but ten Saami languages can be distinguished, six of which have written standards (see map on page 29). Core areas are in the north of Norway, Sweden, and Finland; other speakers live interspersed among the majority population, even in the bigger cities, (Sammallahti, 1998) The Saami are one of the most described peoples in the world. Still, we have very little reliable data on the population and their languages. A Saami representative at an international meeting jokes, "After all these centuries with expeditions and research we still do not know who we are, where we live, how many we are and which languages we speak."

To avoid humiliation and to give their children better chances in life, indigenous and minority parents often decide to speak a dominant or official language with their children. Saami parents have not been an exception to this rule, especially in the past. "Optimistic" estimates suggest that at least half of today's oral languages might be dead or moribund -- no longer learned by children -- in a hundred years' time. Pessimistic but still realistic prognoses place the figure as high as 90 percent or even higher. Numerous factors influence attempts to maintain the Saami languages.

Regularities discovered by the Neogrammarians (circa late 19th century) regarding how language structures change made looking at a language as a living organism popular for a while. A language's development, aging, and dying was considered "natural," out of human reach. Languages were not killed, they "died of old age." This agentless "model" for the prediction of the future of languages is still found among politicians, and legitimates their way of treating minority languages.

It has since become clear that language is an institution constructed in and by society, and that it should be studied as such. Many studies have revealed the intricate connections between factors affecting a language's position in society. (Hyltenstam et al., 1999; King, 2000) The languages people learn can be considered linguistic capital. In this model, the worth of each language on the linguistic market is decided by the political and economic power of the people using the language. Sufficient theoretical models are not yet available to predict the survival or death/killing of indigenous or minority languages, even in broad terms. Every language is itself unique and every language situation has it own characteristics. Even if the situation seems dire for many languages, it is still possible to revitalise them and start using them more often. Which languages survive and which do not ultimately seems to be a question of human will, not of any rules of nature.

Reflection on Saami Experience

Up to the 17(th) century, the Saami society lived its own life, with little interference from the outside. Historically, the language situation can be divided into three distinct periods: a missionary phase; a harsh assimilation phase; and the present phase, with progress for integration and some self-determination.

The 17(th) and 18(th) centuries characterise the beginning of missionary activities, with some very positive projects for the benefit of the Saami languages: teaching was conducted through the medium of Saami and religious texts were translated into Saami. From the middle of the 19(th) century, a new policy based on national romanticism and vulgar-Darwinist ideas led to a harsh suppression of the Saami and their languages. The Norwegian Parliament and government pursued overtly a policy aiming at assimilating the whole Saami population in Norway in the course of one generation. During a 30-year period (from 1970 onward) a new policy, which was first and foremost a result of the Saami cultural and political movement that has grown stronger since World War II, has gradually been formed by the Nordic states. (The first Saami initiatives, which date from around 1900, did not survive the harsh political climate that dominated at that time.) New language policy processes are bottom-up, starting at the local level and moving up to the national level. (Magga, 1990) In the political field, the process has reached the international level; moreover, Saami movements have formed an essential basis for the formulation of indigenous and minority rights in general.

All of these stages have had effects on the languages. The "dark century," 1870 to 1970, had detrimental effects which can still be felt on both the languages themselves and on their status and speakers. In the coastal areas of Norway (and elsewhere), negative attitudes were transmitted by the Saami themselves, and intergenerational transfer of the language ceased in one generation.

It seems that the new language efforts (from the 1970s) have been successful in many ways: in achieving recognition for the Saami languages, in developing the languages themselves, and in maintaining the total numbers of Saami speakers. On a national level, these efforts have been successful when it comes to legislation and formal recognition. Obviously, the identification of language rights as part of general human rights has had positive effects. Governments with aspirations in human rights have listened to arguments about language rights. Sadly, the clear tendency of Nordic governments today is to be less sensitive toward these kinds of arguments. As long as states could enhance their international profiles as defenders of human and indigenous rights without having to grant large concessions, they were willing to support cultural and other rights for indigenous peoples. But there seems to be a limit when real self-determination, including questions of land rights, are brought into the agenda. This general tendency is echoed internationally.

Recent language efforts have also faced difficulties. Majority attitudes were easier to influence in favor of minority languages when the whole debate was at the level of principle. To influence everyday practice has proved much more difficult. Likewise, implementation of language legislation has been difficult at both central and local levels. One of the most striking failures of the Saami strategies is that the smaller Saami languages (in numbers of speakers) have not seen success in improving their situation or even in defending their previous position. This failure is partly due to the fact that most speakers live apart from the larger Saami groups. Dispersed among Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, and Russians, they do not have the demographic concentration that would enable them to use their language in the workplace and in official situations, including schools. Saami initiatives have also faced problems in getting language legislation implemented. In Norway, many municipalities with a Saami population had developed procedures to give the Saami some local linguistic rights. Yet, when the Saami language law (in force since 1992) designated certain areas as belonging to the Saami administrative districts, many of the municipalities left outside these official districts -- often municipalities where the speakers of the smaller Saami languages lived -- withdrew services in Saami, claiming that the law did not require them. The situation has thus deteriorated in non-Saami-designated areas. (This decline is clearly evident in the largest study ever conducted on the use of Saami languages in Norway; the study contains interviews with almost 1000 Saami speakers and over 1000 Norwegian speakers in the Saami areas and can be read in Saami and Norwegian at www.samediggi.no.) (SEG, 2000)

Legal protection is clearly insufficient; strategies for implementing maintenance support principles must be worked out. The rights of Saami speakers and their languages are still weak compared with those of non-Saami speakers, even in traditional Saami areas. The situation of upper secondary schools established specifically for Saami students in traditional Saami areas in Norway is illustrative. When there is one Norwegian-speaking student in a class, it is taken for granted that all teaching must be in Norwegian. When teachers have used Saami in their teaching in such situations, lively debates on the rights of the Norwegian speaker have ensued and the situation has been described as one of discrimination against the Norwegian speaker. Naturally, teachers try to avoid accusations of discrimination, with the result that hardly any teaching takes place through the medium of Saami. This result ruins the entire system of education through the medium of Saami. Clearly, there exists a culture clash between the Saami community's collective right to maintain and develop their language(s) and the right of individual Norwegian-speaking students, be they (ethnically) Saami or not; a clash, that is, between indigenous collective rights thinking and "western" individual rights thinking. Although there is agreement at the level of principle about the value of indigenous cultures and languages, the realisation of these principles fails in everyday life. Only slowly do Saami speakers dare to start claiming their rights in practice. If someone chooses to speak Saami at an official meeting, this action may still be interpreted as a demonstration -- especially if the person in question is believed to master the majority language as well.

Though new Saami language niches are being created -- at least one higher education institution uses Saami as its main language (http://samiskhs.no) -- this development is not unproblematic. Often, majority language speakers don't seem to understand the necessity of using Saami; many think that their language rights are infringed if they are exposed to a monolingual Saami situation. They may demand that more of the activities at a Saami institution be in a language that they themselves understand, forgetting that such a change would violate Saami speakers' rights by neglecting the need to use and develop Saami languages in all domains.

A significant discrepancy still exists between rhetorical (positive) attitudes on the group level, and actual language choice on the individual level. (Johansson, 1975) Many Saami parents who are active in Saami cultural efforts (furthering and developing traditional handicraft, for instance) use the majority language with their own children. Moreover, in marriages with a non-Saami-speaking spouse, Saami is not often used in the home. Even some prominent defenders of Saami culture and language have not taught Saami to their children. Decolonisation of the mind is a long process (see Ng...g...wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind).

A linguistic market where demand not only exists, but is actively created, is necessary for the supply to be developed and maintained. In earlier times, for example, the Saami (and their reindeer) dominated the transport systems in winter in the north. Due to their monopoly, everyone needing their services had to know some Saami. Today's snow scooters, helicopters, and cars in Norway "speak Norwegian." Certain brutal realities are decisive when it comes to implementation. We are only beginning to create new niches for Saami languages in a modern society.

Factors in Language Maintenance Strategies

Societal (structural and ideological) factors influence the relationship between the minority in question and the majority population. Political factors, including general legislation, regulate or limit the position of minorities in society -- their degree of autonomy and self-determination. The position also has social implications for the use of the languages. Language legislation is one of the most obvious instruments for protecting minority languages. During the 1990s, legislation aimed at securing for Saami speakers certain limited rights within administration, police, courts, and other sectors of society was introduced in all three Nordic countries with a Saami population (Finland, Norway, Sweden); it is still too early to evaluate the effects.1 A central question for both types of legislation is implementation. In certain parts of Norway, the resistance from the Norwegian-speaking majority against any form of Saami cultural rights has been very strong. In such a situation, the majority's "own" people in the administration -- a sector where the majority as a rule dominates -- are often reluctant to follow the rule of law. Majority attitudes (e.g., pluralistic, segregative, assimilationist) play a decisive role both in the preparation of legislation and in the everyday status of minority languages. In Saamiland, these attitudes were very negative until the 1960s and 1970s; only recently have they started changing in a more positive direction.

Economic resources confer social status; minority peoples are often far from wealthy. Earlier, Saami reindeer herders were believed to be very rich, and this perception had a positive effect on the status of their languages. Today, Saami areas are, economically, the weakest areas in all three countries. Modern economic "development," including the exploitation of natural resources in Saami areas (where the profits go elsewhere), does not further Saami language development; on the contrary, Saami-speaking workers in mines may even experience overt discrimination, and their language can be used only informally. As a rule, industrialisation promotes majority languages and suppresses the Saami languages. Company languages are always Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, and/or English, never Saami. Majority socio-cultural norms dominate while Saami norms are made invisible. Even a simple thing like the answer to the Saami "Buore beaivvi!" (Good morning) is unknown to most non-Saami in Saami areas, even though the Norwegian population has lived there for 4-5 centuries. Saami clothes are considered exotic (and used by the tourist industry). Even or uneven distribution of educational resources, including questions concerning the medium and the content of education, is decisive for competence development in indigenous languages. In Saamiland, the formal education level is generally low among the Saami population, although it may be high in comparison to local surroundings in a few places with a concentration of Saami institutions and formally-educated Saami (in Kárásjohka, for example).

Group level factors describe the internal life of the group. Certain demographic factors are not advantageous for Saami language maintenance:

1) the Saami live in four countries (Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden) rather than one;

2) they live mostly interspersed among majority groups, and their total number, especially within each country, is relatively low;

3) the total number of speakers of some of the Saami languages is very modest, even if the total number of speakers is not yet critical;

4) more young people marry across linguistic boundaries and, as a rule, their children do not learn Saami (but this may be changing). On the other hand, the Saami-speaking population is young -- a valuable potential.

The situation of the languages can involve great challenges. The variety of Saami languages and/or dialects, in itself a richness, has also meant difficulties in creating writing systems. National borders and national languages have influenced these writing systems and functioned as a mitigating factor against standardisation. Bilingual situations tend to develop rapidly in favour of the majority language and to the detriment of Saami.

The Saami population is heterogeneous in terms of cultural background, occupation, education, internal organisation, and in institutions, where national norms in four different states create differences. The Saami are today found in nearly every kind of occupation, in addition to traditional occupations like reindeer herding, fishing, and farming. Saami ethnicity is a positive factor for language maintenance because, despite several states and languages, it defines the group as one people, with certain rights. On this basis, internal organising has been very effective during the last 30 years, and a series of Saami institutions has been established. Among these, Saami media (radio and newspapers) are an important factor. Though TV production in Saami is still very modest, the Saami Radio and three Saami medium newspapers have established Northern Saami as a modern language. Cultural expressions like literature and theatre have developed and have had a stimulating effect on language maintenance and development.

Individual factors have to do with the behaviour and attitudes of individuals. Are children socialised into speaking Saami as their mother tongue, at home and outside? Which language or combination of languages do bilingual Saami choose with other bilinguals? A study about language choice (Helander, 1984) in a small village in northern Sweden showed the usual functional differentiation: Saami was the language of family and everyday life whereas Swedish was used in all situations involving outsiders. The opportunities to "choose" Saami are very limited. The most important of all factors for individuals is the language socialisation in families and in the closest environments outside the home. This choice -- whether or not to transfer the language to the next generation -- is the real key to language maintenance. However, it, in turn, influences and is influenced by other factors. As a general rule Hyltenstam et al. emphasise the importance of a genuine need for the language -- it must have a value on the linguistic market as well.

Linguistic Human Rights as Part of Maintenance Strategies

Some of the direct main agents for linguistic (and cultural) genocide -- formal education and the mass media -- come under societal factors, as do the macro-level economic, military, and political agents. The concept of linguicism, used by analogy to racism and sexism, was created to address issues of linguistic inequality. It refers to "ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, regulate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language." (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988; 2000)

Linguistic genocide can be understood as an end point on a continuum where the other end point is full enjoyment of all linguistic human rights. In most cases, official languages and their native speakers enjoy all linguistic human rights, including state support for the intergenerational transmission of their languages in the state school system through the use of these languages as the main media of education. The same is not true for the Saami languages. The situation is worst in Sweden and not good even in Finland and Norway, despite Saami's official or semi-official status there (Saami's strongest position is in the education system in Norway).2 The educational scenario for most indigenous peoples today still fits UN definitions of linguistic genocide.

First language attrition and loss have been described fairly extensively in research literature and fiction; some focus on the Saami. Of Finnish immigrant minority members in Sweden who had Swedishmedium education, not one spoke any Finnish to their own children. (Janulf, 1998) Even if they themselves might not have forgotten their Finnish, their children were forcibly transferred to the majority group, at least linguistically. This happens to millions of speakers of threatened languages the world over, including many Saami: education through the medium of a dominant majority language often leads to the students eventually using the dominant language with their own children. Over a generation or two the children are linguistically and often also culturally assimilated. Since there are no alternatives in formal education (i.e., schools or classes that teach mainly through the medium of the threatened indigenous or minority languages), the transfer to a dominant group happens by force. For it to be voluntary, alternatives should exist, and parents would need to have enough reliable information about the long-term consequences of various choices. None of these conditions is normally fulfilled for indigenous or minority parents and children. Rather, the situations where children lose their first language through forced assimilation can often be characterised as genocide, a concept defined by Articles II (e) and (b) of the 1948 UN International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Article II(e), "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"; and

Article II(b), "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" (emphasis added).

A wealth of research and statistics about the "mental harm" caused by forced assimilation also exists. Effects include reduced chances for expressing and even developing one's full potential -- linguistically, psychologically, cognitively -- on the labour market and in societal participation. Indigenous and minority children have to work much harder to achieve. This situation obviously entails a threat to democracy and equality. Williams concludes, in his large study from Malawi and Kenya, that, "For the majority of children in both countries, the test results, and classroom observations, suggest there is a clear risk that the policy of using English as a vehicular language may contribute to stunting, rather than promoting, academic and cognitive growth." (Williams 1998; emphasis added) A similar conclusion is reached in Australia by Anne Lowell and Brian Devlin in an article (1999) entitled "Miscommunication between Aboriginal Students and their Non-Aboriginal Teachers in a Bilingual School." Education through the dominant language clearly "severely inhibited the children's education," and was "the greatest barrier to successful classroom learning for Aboriginal Children."

For the maintenance and development of languages (and thereby linguistic diversity on earth), educational language rights, including the right to mother-tongue-medium education, are absolutely vital. Binding linguistic human rights (education rights in particular) might be one of the necessary (but not sufficient) ways of counteracting linguicide and linguicism. Unfortunately, today there is no proper basis in international law for these rights to be implemented (see the overviews and analyses in Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, Eds., 1994 and Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). When we move from the non-duty-inducing human rights instrument preambles about the importance of languages to their binding clauses -- especially to the educational clauses -- language often disappears completely. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), for instance, the paragraph on education (26) does not refer to language at all; in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the educational Article (13) omits reference to language or linguistic groups (which are mentioned in its general Article 2.2). If language-related rights are included and specified, the articles dealing with these rights are typically so weak and unsatisfactory as to be virtually meaningless. For instance, in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (in force since 1998; Norway, Sweden, and Finland have ratified it for the Saami), the formulations in the education Article 8 include a range of modifications. Just as in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious, and Linguistic Minorities, the opt-outs and alternatives permit a reluctant state to meet the requirements in a minimalist way. A state may claim, for instance, that a provision was not "possible" or "appropriate," or that numbers were not "sufficient" or did not "justify" a provision, or that it "allowed" the minority to organise teaching of their language as a subject, at their own cost.

Conclusions

Revitalisation and even reclamation of earlier minorised languages are taking place. Amery (2000) describes encouraging work on reclaiming Kaurna, an Australian Aboriginal language whose last speaker died some 60 years ago. The reclamation is mainly based on missionary documents dating from around 1850. The Maori, Hawaiians, and Saami use "language nests" in which preschoolers are taught in the indigenous languages by linguistically and culturally proficient elders. Often, their pre-school teachers and parents also develop more proficiency in the ancestral language. In immersion programs for these indigenous children, they are taught in indigenous languages that they do not know initially. The training of teachers and journalists in, for, and through the medium of several small indigenous languages is expanding; in Arctic areas, for instance, indigenous peoples are also establishing their own universities. MasterApprentice programs in California (see Hinton, 1994) pair off proficient indigenous elders with younger people for 6-12 months, 20 hours a week, for language revitalisation purposes; the only requirement is that they use an indigenous language. These are just a few examples.

Despite such work, strategies to counteract the linguistic dominance and hierarchisation that may ultimately lead to the disappearance of the majority of today's languages are urgently needed. Today's efforts are completely insufficient. We will mention some urgent tasks:

- The basic facts about minority and indigenous languages in terms of numbers of speakers (at each level) and their geographic distribution must be established. In many countries, even in modern countries like the Nordic ones, these kinds of basic data are lacking.

- New additional strategies to support numerically small languages must be found. We do not believe that a certain critical number of speakers is needed for a language to be maintained; it is more a question of finding innovative strategies -- making people aware of the potential and the globally invaluable knowledges embedded in every language and culture.

- The languages must be used as media of instruction in education, in the labour market, in administration, and in other official domains. If a language is only taught as a subject, it is not developed in terms of vocabulary and discourse for use in all domains. Either/or questions of the following type (often heard in Africa or Asia) are misplaced: should meagre economic resources be used for primary education through the medium of the indigenous/minority language, or for higher education? Both are vital, and without using the language for purposes above the primary education level and everyday life, the language will soon be unable to function in other domains -- and what value does it have on the linguistic market if one cannot use it to discuss physics or politics? Likewise, collective and individual rights do not compete; both are necessary and complement each other.

- Strategies should be developed for strengthening the use of indigenous languages in the private sector (banks, shops, etc.). Much can be learned from places like Québec and Latvia; we need language supporter groups that might prepare, for example, labels in Saami, and be willing to paste them on such products as milk packs in shops to draw attention to discriminatory language practices.

- Orthographic standardisation must be done with great care and respect. If smaller-in-numbers language speakers feel that their languages and experiences are not being respected, they will not feel that resulting written languages are their own. Linguistic and orthographic self-determination is essential.

- When writing systems are being developed or revised, the extent to which these writing systems can be used in a technological age should be considered. Alternatives that use common fonts and can be used on TV and on the Internet -- and that ordinary people feel still represent the languages more or less fully -- must be developed.

- We must make sure that indigenous peoples are granted the right to become highlevel multilinguals, and at the same time, we must guarantee them the possibility of living and dying in one language -- their mother tongue.3 To support a minority language both on the individual level and on the collective level, and to support the development of the language itself, mean that we have to use our resources accordingly. As a rule, furthering real equality means that we have to support a minority language much more than a majority language. Every forum where the minority language can be used locally is immensely more important to it than to the majority language. Equality is misunderstood if it leads to an equal division of time and resources between a minority and majority language.

- Of course, majority attitudes are decisive for the development of an official sphere for the language. Without a rather radical turn in majority awareness in Scandinavia, teaching in Saami, and legislation to support it, would never have developed. Since minorities often adopt the majority's attitudes toward minorities and their cultures, majority members must be supportive at the local and personal levels.

- States are still the main actors on the international stage. States have the primary responsibility in all international cooperation and in the development of international law. The contributions from states like Norway and Denmark have been important in the process of developing instruments like the ILO Convention 169. Linguistic human rights must be seen as a part of the general human rights system. (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1994) Binding international legal standards are needed that oblige states to protect and develop language rights, both as individual rights for every human being and as collective rights for a people, with particular focus on minorities and indigenous peoples.

- Conflict avoidance should not lead to weakly-expressed demands. In Norway, conflicts have opened up a path toward constructive solutions. Handling conflicts over longer periods does take a much heavier toll on minorities than it does on majorities, however.

(1). See Huss, 1999 and Aikio-Puoskari & Pentikäinen, 2001 for Finland; Magga, 1994 for Norway; and Hyltenstam et al., 1999 for Sweden.

(2). Since 1998, every Saami child all over the country has an individual right to the teaching of Saami as a subject in comprehensive school (ages 7-15). Within the Saami districts in the north they also have an individual right to be taught through the medium of Saami. Outside this area, there must be at least ten pupils to claim this right (Law on education 17.07.1998 nr. 61 from KUF [Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet], (...6-2, Samisk opl...ring i grunnskolen).

(3). The question is to what extent having high levels of competence in two or more languages that can be used for the same purposes always leads to monolingualism in a majority language (as was thought earlier). Another question is to what extent does diglossia (i.e., two languages used for different purposes) also in the end lead to monolingualism in a majority language in societies where the general linguistic ethos is monolingually oriented, as it is in most Western societies? A solution is that various systems always support and use the language that otherwise has fewer chances of developing to a high formal level. This is always the indigenous language, both for minorities and those in the majority population who want to become multilingual. Equality must always be seen in the light of the goals rather than in a mechanical way.

Acknowledgements

A longer version of our article is in press in Huss et al. We thank Kendall King, Leena Huss and Eileen Moore Quinn for constructive comments.

References & further reading:

Amery, R. (2000). Warrabarna Kaurna! Reclaiming an Australian Language. Series Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.

Aikio-Puoskari, U. & Pentikäinen, M. (2001). Language rights of the Saami in Finland. Series Juridica Lapponica. Rovaniemi: Lapin yliopisto, Pohjoisen ymparistö- ja vähemmistöoikeuden instituutti.

Helander, E. (1984). Om trespråkighet - en undersökning av språkvalet hos samerna i ...ver Soppero (Trilingualism - a study of language choice among Saamis in ...vre Soppero). Umeå: Acta Universitatis Umensis. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 67.

Hinton, L. (1994). Flutes of Fire. Berkeley: Heyday.

Huss, L. (1999). Reversing Language Shift in the Far North. Linguistic Revitalization in Scandinavia and Finland. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Uralica Upsaliensia 31. Uppsala: Uppsala University.

Huss, L., Camilleri, A. & King, K. Eds. (in press). Transcending Monolingualism: Linguistic Revitalisation in Education. Series Multilingualism and Linguistic Diversity. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.

Hyltenstam, K., Stroud, C. & Svonni, M. (1999). Språkbyte, språkbevarande, revitalisering. Samiskans ställning i svenska Sápmi (Language shift, language maintenance, and revitalization. The position of Saami in Swedish Sammiland). In Sveriges sju inhemska språk - ett minoritetsspråksperspektiv (Sweden's seven domestic languages - a minority language perspective). Hyhenstam, K. Ed. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Pp 41-97.

Janulf, P. (1998). Kommer finskan i Sverige att fortleva? En studie av språkkunskaper och språkanvändning hos andragenerationens sverigefinnar i Botkyrka och hos finlandssvenskar i ...bo (Will Finnish survive in Sweden? A study of language skills and language use among second generation Sweden Finns in Botkyrka, Sweden, and Finland Swedes in Turku, Finland). Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Fennica Stockholmiensia 7. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.

Johansson, H. (1975). Samernas språk og kultur. En intervjuundersökning rörande kulturella, sociala och psykologiska frågor. (Saami languages and culture. Interview study on cultural social and psychological issues). Samerna i Sverige. Stöd åt språk och kultur. Bilagor (The Saami in Sweden: Support for language and culture. Annexes). Stockholm: SOU 1975:100. Pp 271-373.

King, K. (2000). Language revitalization processes and prospects: Quichua in the Ecuadorian Andes. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Magga, Ole Henrik (1990). The Saami Language in Norway. In Arctic Languages. Collis, Dirmid R.F., Ed. Vendôme: UNESCO. Pp 418-436.

Magga, Ole Henrik (1994). The Saami Language Act. In Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, Eds. Pp 219-232.

Sammallahti, P. (1998). The Saami Languages. Kárásjohka: Davvi Girji OS.

SEG (2000). Iskkadeapmi sámegiela geavaheami birra. Undersfkelse om bruken av samisk språk. (A study on the use of the Saami language). Deatnu/Tana: Saami Ealáhus- ja Guorahallanguovddás/Samisk N...rings- og Utredningssenter.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988). Multilingualism and the education of minority children. In Minority Education: from Shame to Struggle. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. & Cummins, J., Eds. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Pp 9-44.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education -- or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, New Jersey & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. & Phillipson, R. (1994). Linguistic human rights, past and present. In Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming linguistic discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. & Phillipson, R., Eds., in collaboration with Mart Rannut. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Pp 71-110.

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