ENDANGERED SAMI LANGUAGES FACE CUTBACKS TO PRESERVATION. Nine Unesco-defined endangered Sámi languages spoken across Nordic countries could completely vanish if funding cuts are made to the Sámi Giellagáldu group that preserves them, reports The Guardian.
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The Swedish and Finnish governments have said they plan to withdraw funding for the preservation body, prompting Indigenous parliaments in Sweden, Finland, and Norway to warn that some of the languages concerned, including North Sámi , spoken by about 20,000 people, Pite Sámi and Uti Sámi, which have fewer than 50 speakers each, risk disappearing forever if efforts to save them are no longer funded.
The planned budget cuts, amounting to a total of about $700,000, would mean Sámi Giellagáldu will not survive beyond a year, according to Mika Saijet, its director. “It’s so dramatic. We have been in complete shock,” Saijet said. All Sámi languages are defined by Unesco as threatened or critically threatened, and this latest news comes during the second year of the UN’s so-called International Decade of Indigenous Languages.