Semenoff family keeps Skolt Sámi as second home language

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By Eveliina Saarinen
     
     A flurry of activity is going on in the living room of an apartment in Ivalo in Finnish Lapland. Two-year-old Janna-Maria climbs into the lap of her mother Marjo Semenoff. Seven-year-old Janne peeks from behind the easy chair.
     Skolt Sámi is the second home language in the family.
     “I know the word for cat”, says Jasmin, age 8, to the visitor. “Kaass”.
     Rolle, their puppy, inspires mother to ask: “And what is the word for dog?”
     Pensive looks appear on Jasmin’s and Janne’s faces, but the word does not come to them. “It starts with P”, their mother says, and suddenly their faces light up.
     "Piânnai!"
     
Finnish is the language that the family speaks when dealing with everyday life, but the parents make a point of speaking Skolt Sámi with their children as well.
     “They’ll learn at that age, when you speak it to them”, says their father, Heimo Semenoff.
     The story of the Semnoffs, who moved from Sevettijärvi to Ivalo, is a fairly typical one. Their work took them away from their home, where more Skolt Sámi was spoken. In addition, husband and wife do not have the same mother tongue.
     Heimo did not learn Finnish until he was at school. Marjo is from a bilingual home, where Finnish was the main language. She learned Skolt at school
     “But then there was a really big gap, when we could not get a teacher, for which I am truly bitter”, Marjo Semenoff says.
     When she was in the upper grades of comprehensive school, studying the language was real drudgery. Interest in Skolt Sámi emerged again as an adult, after the children were born.
     
However, by then it was too late. Marjo did not learn the language well enough, and now she wants to spare her children the same experience.
     Janne and Janna-Maria have been attending a “language nest” since June: they have gone to a family day care home where the child minder speaks only Skolt Sámi to the children. Jasmin has Skolt lessons at school on two days a week. Janne who begins school this month, has the same task ahead of him.
     “I would like to learn English”, Jasmin admits.
     Their mother insists that the children cannot choose whether or not to speak Skolt Sámi. “When they are older they can forget it, or keep speaking.”
     
Today’s Skolt children grow up in a very different environment from that of the preceding generations.
     When Katri Jefremoff was born in 1932, everyone spoke Skolt Sámi in her home village in Petsamo. Then came the war, which split up the families, and the speakers of Skolt.
     Now Jefremoff sits at home in the village of Nellim. The sun shines through the brown and white checkered curtains, as a blackfly buzzes on the windowpane.
     “I went to elementary school in Swedish”, Jefremoff says recalling her time as a “war child” in Sweden.
     When she returned to Ivalo to live with her grandmother, she could no longer speak Skolt Sámi.
     “I didn’t speak Skolt any more than Finnish. Then I had to start studying it again.”
     
Jefremoff had to learn Finnish, as she worked as a maid in Finnish-speaking families. She got married in 1951.
     Her seven children had an equally bumpy linguistic road. They were not allowed to speak to each other in Skolt Sámi at school - not even in the dormitories, where they had to live because of the long distance home.
     “It was very difficult for the pupils. They had to learn to speak Finnish.”
     Jefremoff believes that this contributed to the deterioration of the language.
     Nowadays she hears Skolt Sámi spoken less than before, and says that she might even forget the occasional word. Nevertheless, it is still possible to speak the language daily.
     
“Now there is the mobile phone, and I can make a call on it if I don’t get around to going to a neighbour”, Jefremoff says. “The news also comes once a week in the Skolt language.”
     With her own children Jefremoff might speak in Skolt Sámi, but it does not work with the grandchildren any more. So what is happening to Skolt?
     “It will disappear, of course, but now there are so many books and cassettes. The language will be preserved in them, even when time has passed us by.”
     A heavy burden rests on the shoulders of today’s Skolt children: will their language be consigned to books, or will the children pass it on?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.8.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Where Lappish joik turns to rap, and reindeer to bytes (30.1.2007)

Links:
  Multimedia show: Skolt Sámi life
  Wikipedia: Skolt Sámi language
  Wikipedia: Skolt Sámi people
  Virtual Finland: The Saami: An ancient population on the northern edge of Europe

EVELIINA SAARINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
eveliina.saarinen@hs.fi