ABSTRACT
Sámi is a member of the Uralic language family. The Uralic family consists of two main branches. One is Samoyedic, which includes a number of languages spoken in Siberia, and the other is Finno-Ugric, which includes languages spoken to the west of the Ural Mountains. The Uralic languages are spoken by approximately 25 million people in total in a broad geographical area stretching from Siberia to the Atlantic coast of Norway. The Uralic languages with the largest numbers of speakers are Hungarian (approximately 14 million speakers), Finnish (5.4 million speakers), and Estonian (1.2 million speakers). These three languages are the only members of the Uralic family with official national status in an independent country; in addition, they are official languages of the European Union. Certain other Uralic languages with relatively large numbers of speakers, such as Mordvin (Erzya and Moksha), Mari, Udmurt, Komi, and Karelian, have official status in various regions of Russia. There are also a number of highly endangered Uralic languages, such as Selkup and Nenets in Siberia and Veps and Votic by the Baltic Sea.
