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Kildin Sami самь кӣлл
Spoken in:	Kola Peninsula, Murmansk Oblast, Russia
Total speakers:	~500
Language family:	Uralic  Finno-Ugric   Finno-Permic    Finno-Volgaic     Finno-Lappic      Sami       Eastern        Kildin Sami
Writing system:	Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	smi
ISO 639-3:	sjd
Kildin Sami is 8 on this map.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Kildin Sami (also spelled Sámi or Saami; formerly Lappish) is a Sami language spoken by approximately 500 people on the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. Kildin Sami is written using an official Cyrillic script.

Although Kildin Sámi is spoken by about 500 people throughout the Kola Peninsula, the area around Lovozero has the highest concentration of speakers. It is the largest of the Eastern Sami languages by virtue of the number of its speakers. Its future, however, appears to not be as bright as that of Skolt Sámi or Inari Sámi. The Sámi language that is often considered to be closest to Kildin Sámi, Akkala Sámi, is often considered to be a dialect of Kildin Sámi.

Main article: Kildin Sami orthography

Kildin Sami is written in an extended version of the Cyrillic alphabet that was officially approved in 1937.

ҍ or letters with * follow palatalized д, т, н.

Long vowels are marked with a macron (¯) over the vowel letter (and above the diaeresis in the cases of ӓ and ӭ).

The letters ӓ, ҋ/ј, ӆ, ӎ, ӊ, ӈ, ҏ, ъ, ь, ҍ and ӭ do not occur word initially, either because the letters mark features of preceding consonants (like, e.g. ӓ, ъ) or the sounds they represent do not occur word initially (like, e.g. ӆ). So these letters don't normally occur in uppercase, except for all caps text.

The letter h occurs word medially or word finally before the letters к, п, т, ц and ч, and marks preaspiration. It is always lowercase, even in all caps text. In another version of the orthography ' (apostrophe) is used to mark preaspiration.

Ҋ and ј are alternate ways of writing the same sound, a voiceless palatal approximant.

The letter щ occurs only in Russian loanwords.

Several issues have arisen, however, in ensuring that the official written language gains widespread acceptance: the language's numerous dialects, the myriad ways words can be written and its small number of speakers.

Rimma Kurutsj's dictionary presents the following vowels for Kildin Sámi:

• Ethnologue report for language code:sjd
• (Russian) Алфавит саамского языка (кильдинский диалект)
• (Russian) Sami-Russian dictionary, Kuruch R. D., Grammar of Kildin Sami language (DJVU, PDF)
• Kildin Saami language by Jelena Porsanger

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