The alarming prospect of extinction for the Sámi languages of Nordic countries is not as inevitable as your article suggests (Funding cuts could mean death of Sámi languages, say Indigenous parliaments, 21 October). For one thing, just one Sámi language (Northern Sámi) is spoken by more than 20,000 of 30,000 Sámi speakers; the others are spoken mostly by tiny groups.
Sámi is not Europe’s only indigenous language – Basque is also indigenous and has found a viable solution, enabling it to maintain its half a million speakers with a full range of media. Basque also has several dialects, not all mutually intelligible. The Basque academy created “unified Basque” (Euskara batua), based largely on Gipuzkoan Basque, spoken in northern Spain. Speakers in the media use local pronunciations, but unified written forms.
Sámi is more likely to thrive and receive funding from Nordic governments if an academy is formed to establish unified language norms on the basis of the dominant northern Sámi language, and help the 8% of Sámi who speak variant Sámi languages to accept them.
Donald Rayfield
Sevenoaks, Kent
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