Rapping in Sami

Sami is a language spoken by about 20,000 people around the Arctic Circle.  Santa Claus would bark out his orders to his reindeer in Sami.

Such languages are fast disappearing, and only local energy and devotion can keep them alive, supported by enlightened language policies. Why it is in our interest to keep these languages alive is food for another blog, and I can feel one coming on…

One young Sami man has begun to rap in Sami. From the video accompanying this article, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23497131, it appears he is a minister, but more importantly, he is a Sami man from a village of 250 people who is doing the necessary to keep his language alive. His mixture of modern and ancient looks like it has a chance of catching the attention of Sami people who might otherwise slip into Norwegian or Finnish or Swedish or, from the sound of his perfect English, English.

endangered languages, language policy, linguistics, multilingualism, sociolinguistics

endangered languages, language planning and policy, multilingualism, Sociolinguistics