Where is Lule Saami spoken?

Lule Saami (julevsámegiella) is an Uralic language, spoken in Norway and Sweden. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Language families (largest ten)

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  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
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  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Lule Saami is spoken

Lule Saami is spoken in 2 countries: Norway and Sweden.

Lule Saami has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Lule Saami?

Wikidata gives about 700 speakers (Lule Saami, 2022). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Lule Saami sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Lule Saami as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Uralic
  2. Saami
  3. Western Saami
  4. Central Western Saami
  5. Lule-Pite Saami
  6. Lule Saami

Related languages

Other languages in the Lule-Pite Saami group:

More about Lule Saami

Codes: ISO 639-3 smj, Glottolog lule1254. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Lule Saami

Where is Lule Saami spoken?

Lule Saami is spoken in Norway and Sweden. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Lule Saami?

Wikidata gives about 700 speakers (Lule Saami, 2022). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Lule Saami in?

Glottolog places Lule Saami in the Uralic family, in the branch Saami, Western Saami, Central Western Saami and Lule-Pite Saami.

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