Skolt Sami phonology

Special features of this Sami language include a highly complex vowel system and a suprasegmental contrast of palatalized vs. non-palatalized stress groups; palatalized stress groups are indicated by a “softener mark”, represented by the free-standing modifier letter prime (ʹ).

Vowels
The system of vowel phonemes is as follows; their orthographic representations are given in brackets.

Notes:
 * The difference between and  is not indicated in the standard orthography, where both of these sounds are spelled e.
 * is pronounced much like Estonian õ.

Long and short vowels contrast phonologically: cf. leʹtt ‘vessel’ vs. leeʹtt ‘vessels’. All vowels can occur as both long and short.

The vowels can combine to form twelve opening diphthongs:

All diphthongs can occur as both long and short, although this is not indicated in spelling. Short diphthongs are distinguished from long ones by both length and stress placement: short diphthongs have a stressed second component, whereas long diphthongs have stress on the first component.

Diphthongs may also have two variants depending on whether they occur in a plain or palatized environment. This has a clearer effect with diphthongs whose second element is back or central. Certain inflectional forms, including the addition of the palatizing suprasegmental, also trigger a change in diphthong quality.

Consonants
The inventory of consonant phonemes is the following; their orthographic representations are given in brackets:

1Unvoiced stops and affricates are pronounced preaspirated after vowels and sonorant consonants.

2Voiced stops and affricates are usually pronounced just weakly voiced.

3 has the allophone [h] in initial position.

Consonants may be phonemically short or long (geminate) both word-medially or word-finally; both are exceedingly common. Long and short consonants also contrast in consonant clusters, cf. kuõskkâd 'to touch' : kuõskâm 'I touch'.

Suprasegmentals
There is one phonemic suprasegmental, the palatalizing suprasegmental that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable. In written language the palatalizing suprasegmental is indicated with a free-standing acute accent between a stressed vowel and the following consonant, as follows:


 * vääʹrr 'mountain, hill' (suprasegmental palatalization present)
 * cf. väärr 'trip' (no suprasegmental palatalization)

The suprasegmental palatalization has three distinct phonetic effects:


 * The stressed vowel is pronounced as slightly more fronted in palatalized syllables than in non-palatalized ones.
 * When the palatalizing suprasegmental is present, the following consonant or consonant cluster is pronounced as weakly palatalized. It should be noted that suprasegmental palatalization is independent of segmental palatals: inherently palatal consonants (i.e. consonants with palatal place of articulation) such as the palatal glide /j/, the palatal nasal /ń/ (spelled $⟨nj⟩$) and the palatal lateral approximant /ĺ/ (spelled $⟨lj⟩$) can occur both in non-palatalized and suprasegmentally palatalized syllables.
 * If the word form is monosyllabic and ends in a consonant, a non-phonemic weakly voiced or unvoiced vowel is pronounced after the final consonant. This vowel is e-colored if suprasegmental palatalization is present, but a-colored if not.

Stress
Skolt Sami has four different types of stress for words:


 * Primary stress
 * Secondary stress
 * Tertiary stress
 * Zero stress

The first syllable of any word is always the primary stressed syllable in Skolt Sami as Skolt is a fixed-stress language. In words with two or more syllables, the final syllable is quite lightly stressed (tertiary stress) and the remaining syllable, if any, are stressed more heavily than the final syllable, but less than the first syllable (secondary stress).

Using the abessive and the comitative singular in a word appears to disrupt this system, however, in words of more than one syllable. The suffix, as can be expected, has tertiary stress, but the penultimate syllable also has tertiary stress, even though it would be expected to have secondary stress.

Zero stress can be said to be a feature of conjunctions, postpositions, particles and monosyllabic pronouns.