Aikio Ante, Ylikoski Jussi. The Structure of North Saami

The University of Utah, 2009 (Revised 2010). - 174 p.North Saami has four main dialect groups: the Western Inland dialects (WI), the Eastern Inland dialects (EI), the Torne dialects (T), and the Sea dialects (S). The differences between the dialects are mainly phonological. There are also some lexical differences, but grammatical differences are small.
In general typological terms, North Saami can be described as a synthetic, highly fusional language – meaning that the inflection of words often involves phonological alterations, portmanteau morphemes, and blurring of morpheme boundaries.
There is no standard pronunciation in North Saami, so everyone speaks the language according to their own dialect; therefore also a student learning to speak North Saami will have to learn to pronounce the language according to some dialect. In this course handout, two pronunciation keys are given: one approximating a typical WI and another a typical EI pronunciation. Minor phonological differences between subdialects will be ignored. The geographically more marginal Torne and Sea dialects show quite notable phonological differences from the inland dialects; these will not be dealt with in this presentation.