Proto-Sámi is the hypothetical, reconstructed common ancestor of the Sámi languages. Its reconstructed ancestor is the Proto-Uralic language.

Homeland and expansion Proto-Sámi descends from Proto-Uralic. Finnic languages and Sámi languages are currently geographically adjacent and coexisting in the same areas. However, whether or not they are linguistically closely related is disputed. That is, the validity of a separate grouping of "Finno-Sámic languages" is not universally accepted and the existence of a separate "Proto-Finno-Sámic language" as parent language of Proto-Sámic is uncertain. Valter Lang (of University of Tartu) posits that the Baltic Finns and the Sámi were already separate linguistic groups before they left the Uralic core area, and arrived to Fennoscandia via different routes. The Sámi entered Fennoscandia from the east or southeast. In contrast, Baltic Finns took a southern route from the Daugava river (in today's Latvia) to northern Estonia and over the sea into western Finland. This makes a separately developed Finno-Sámic language chronologically untenable. Instead, if the Finno-Sámic group existed, it was at best a group of western Proto-Uralic dialects, not a separately language.Lang, Valter (2020). Homo Fennicus – Itämerensuomalaisten etnohistoria. Finnish Literature Society. pp. 253–255. ISBN 978-951-858-130-0.

Although the current Sámi languages are spoken much further to the north and west, Proto-Sámi was likely spoken in the area of modern-day Southwestern Finland around the first few centuries CE. Local (in Sápmi) ancestors of the modern Sámi people likely still spoke non-Uralic, "Paleoeuropean" languages at this point (see Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate). This situation can be traced in placenames as well as through the analysis of loanwords from Germanic, Baltic, and Finnic. Evidence also can be found for the existence of language varieties closely related to but likely distinct from Sámi proper having been spoken further east, with a limit around Lake Beloye.

There is abundant toponymic evidence of Sámi settlement in even the southern parts of Finland, and the Sámi coexisted with Finns and Swedes in southern Finland as late as the 14th century. Separation of the main branches (West Sámi and East Sámi) is also likely to have occurred in southern Finland, with these later independently spreading north into Sápmi. The exact routes of this are not clear: it is possible Western Sámi entered Scandinavia across Kvarken rather than via land. Concurrently, Finnic languages that would eventually end up becoming modern-day Finnish and Karelian were being adopted in the southern end of the Proto-Sámi area, likely in connection with the introduction of agriculture, a process that continued until the 19th century, leading to the extirpation of original Sámi languages in Karelia and all but northernmost Finland.

Phonology Consonants The Proto-Sámi consonant inventory is mostly faithfully retained from Proto-Uralic, and is considerably smaller than what is typically found in modern Sámi languages. There were 16 contrastive consonants, most of which could however occur both short and geminate:

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal(ized) Velar Stops andaffricates Nasals Fricatives Approximants Trill

Stop and affricate consonants were split in three main allophones with respect to phonation: Plain voiceless , , etc., occurred word-initially, adjacent to other voiceless consonants, and in the strong grade of single intervocalic consonants Lax voiceless , , etc., occurred between voiced sounds Preaspirated , , etc., occurred in geminates

The spirant also had two allophones, voiceless occurring word-initially and syllable-finally, and voiced elsewhere.

Consonant gradation A detailed system of allophony is reconstructible, known as consonant gradation. Gradation applied to all intervocalic single consonants as well as all consonant clusters. This is unlike gradation in the related Proto-Finnic and its descendants, where it applied only to a subset. The conditioning factor was the same, however: the weak grade occurred if the following syllable was closed, the strong grade if it was open. This difference was originally probably realized as length:

A single consonant was short in the weak grade, e.g. , half-long in the strong grade A geminate consonant was long in the weak grade, overlong in the strong grade A consonant cluster had a short 1st member in the weak grade, e.g. , a half-long one in the strong grade,

Gradation only applied after a stressed syllable; after an unstressed syllable all medial consonants appeared in the weak grade.

In sources on Proto-Sámi reconstruction, gradation is often assumed but not indicated graphically. In this article, when it is relevant and necessary to show the distinction, the weak grade is denoted with an inverted breve below the consonant(s): s : s̯, č : č̯, tt : t̯t̯, lk : l̯k̯.

After the phonematization of gradation due to loss of word-final sounds, Sámi varieties could be left with as many as four different contrastive degrees of consonant length. This has only been attested in some dialects of Ume Sámi. Most other Sámi varieties phonemically merged the weak grade of geminates with the strong grade of single consonants, leaving only three lengths. In some Sámi languages, other sound developments have left only two or three degrees occurring elsewhere.

Vowels An asymmetric system of four short and five long vowel segments can be reconstructed.

+ Short vowels Front Back Close Mid , Open+ Long vowels Front Back Close-mid Mid Open-mid Open

The four diphthongs only occurred in stressed syllables, in complementary distribution with the two long vowels occurring in unstressed syllables. did not generally occur in the last syllable of a word.

Prosody Stress was not phonemic in Proto-Sámi. The first syllable of a word invariably received primary stress. Non-initial syllables of a word received secondary stress, according to a trochaic pattern of alternating secondarily-stressed and unstressed syllables. Odd-numbered syllables (counting from the start) were stressed, while even-numbered syllables were unstressed. The last syllable of a word was never stressed. Thus, a word could end in either a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (if the last syllable was even-numbered) or a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (if the last syllable was odd-numbered). This gave the following pattern, which could be extended indefinitely (P = primary stress, S = secondary stress, _ = no stress): P P _ P _ _ P _ S _ P _ S _ _ P _ S _ S _ etc.

Because the four diphthongs could only occur in stressed syllables, and consonant gradation only occurred after a stressed syllable, this stress pattern led to alternations between vowels in different forms of the same word. These alternations survive in many Sámi languages in the form of distinct inflectional classes, with words with a stressed second-last syllable following the so-called "even" or "two-syllable" inflection, and words with an unstressed second-last syllable following the "odd" or "three-syllable" inflection. Weakening and simplification of non-final consonants after unstressed syllables contributed further to the alternation, leading to differences that are sometimes quite striking. For example:

Form Even-syllable stem"to live" Odd-syllable stem"to answer" Proto-Sámi Northern Sámi Skolt Sámi Proto-Sámi Northern Sámi Skolt Sámi Infinitive *ealē-t̯ēk ealli-t jiẹˊlle-d *vāstē-tē-t̯ēk vásti-di-t vaˊst-tee-d First-person singular present indicative *eal̯ā-m ealá-n jiẹˊlla-m *vāstē-t̯ā-m vásti-da-n vaˊst-tää-m First-person singular conditional *eal̯ā-k̯ć̯i-m ealá-ši-n jiẹˊll-če-m *vāstē-t̯ie-k̯ć̯i-m vásti-dī-včče-n vaˊst-teˊ-če-m First-person singular potential *eal̯ē-ń̯ć̯ë-m ēle-ža-n jiẹˊll-že-m *vāstē-t̯ea-ń̯ć̯ë-m vásti-dea-čča-n vaˊst-teˊ-že-m

In compounds, which consisted of a combination of several root words, each word retained the stress pattern that it had in isolation, so that that stress remained lexically significant (i.e. could theoretically distinguish compounds from non-compounds). The first syllable of the first part of a compound had the strongest stress, with progressively weaker secondary stress for the first syllables of the remaining parts.

Grammar

Nominals Nominals, i.e. nouns, adjectives, numerals and pronouns were systematically inflected for two numbers and ten cases. The personal pronouns and possessive suffixes also distinguished the dual number.

Cases The cases included the core cases nominative, accusative and genitive; the local cases inessive, elative, illative; as well as essive, partitive, comitative, and abessive.

Case Singularending Pluralending Meaning/use Nominative ∅ *-k Subject, object of imperative Accusative *-m *-jtē Object Partitive *-tē Partial object, motion away Genitive *-n *-j Possession, relation Essive *-nē *-jnē Being, acting as Inessive *-snē Being at, on, inside Elative *-stē *-jstē Motion from, off, out of Illative *-s̯ën *-jtēs̯ën (N)*-jtē (S)*-j̯t̯ën (In) Motion towards, to, onto, into Comitative *-jnē*-jnë (In, Lu) *-j (+ *kuojmē) With, in company of, by means of Abessive *-ptāk̯ëk - Without, lacking

The case system shows some parallel developments with the Finnic languages. Like Finnic, the original Uralic locative *-na was repurposed as an essive, the ablative case *-ta became the partitive, and new locative cases were formed from these by infixing *-s-. Sámi lacks any equivalent to the Finnic "external" cases beginning with *-l-, however. Moreover, the earliest stages of Sámic appear to have used these cases only in the singular, as several of the singular cases do not have a formational counterpart in the plural: The accusative plural developed out of the original ablative/partitive plural form, with plural infix -j- + partitive -ta. The inessive plural is the original essive plural form, with plural infix -j- + locative -na. The illative plural was formed in different ways in the various languages, so that no single form can be reconstructed for Proto-Sámic. The elative plural was likely formed relatively late as well, as it shows a three-consonant cluster, formed analogically by adding the plural -j- to the singular form. The comitative plural was in origin a periphrastic construction consisting of the genitive plural with the noun *kuojmē "companion". Given the discrepancies in the plural locative cases, it is likely that this part of the case system was still partially in development during the late Proto-Sámi period, and developed in subtly different ways in the various descendants. In most Sámi languages, the case system has been simplified: The partitive has been lost in most western languages. In several languages the genitive and accusative singular have coincided, and in Northern Sámi this led to an analogical merger in the plural. Southern and Pite Sámi still keep the two cases separate. A sound change *sn > *st that occurred in the history of several mostly eastern Sámi languages caused a merging of the inessive and elative singular, creating a single "locative" case. Several languages merged the plural cases analogically, but some languages chose the former inessive plural form, while others chose the elative plural.

Possession

+ Proto-Sámi possessive suffixes Case Person Number Singular Dual Plural Nominative 1st *-më *-mën *-mēk 2nd *-të *-tën *-tēk 3rd *-sē *-sēn *-sēk Accusative 1st *-më *-mën *-mēk 2nd *-mtë *-mtën *-mtēk 3rd *-msē *-msēn *-msēk Oblique 1st *-në *-nën *-nēk 2nd *-ntë *-ntën *-ntēk 3rd *-ssē *-ssēn *-ssēk

Verb inflection