The Sámi languages (/ˈsɑːmi/ SAH-mee),[4] also rendered in English as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Indigenous Sámi peoples in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia).

According to the traditional view, Sámi is within the Uralic family most closely related to the Finnic languages (Sammallahti 1998).

The Sami languages are spoken in Sápmi in Northern Europe, in a region stretching over the four countries Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, reaching from the southern part of central Scandinavia in the southwest to the tip of the Kola Peninsula in the east.

During the Middle Ages and early modern period, now-extinct Sami languages were also spoken in the central and southern parts of Finland and Karelia and in a wider area on the Scandinavian Peninsula.

Historical documents as well as Finnish and Karelian oral tradition contain many mentions of the earlier Sami inhabitation in these areas (Itkonen, 1947).

[19] However, reconstruction of any basic proto-languages in the Uralic family have reached a level close to or identical to Proto-Uralic (Salminen 1999).

[20] According to the comparative linguist Ante Aikio, the Proto-Samic language developed in South Finland or in Karelia around 2000–2500 years ago, spreading then to northern Fennoscandia.

[21] The language is believed to have expanded west and north into Fennoscandia during the Nordic Iron Age, reaching central Scandinavia during the Proto-Scandinavian period ca.

The use of Ææ and Øø in Norway vs. Ää and Öö in Sweden merely reflects the orthographic standards used in the Norwegian and Swedish alphabets, respectively, not differences in pronunciations.

The capital letter Ŋ (eng) is commonly presented in Sámi languages using the "N-form" variant based the usual Latin uppercase N with a hook added.

[31] The Finnish SFS 5966 [fi] keyboard standard of 2008[32] is designed for easily typing Sámi languages through use of AltGr and dead diacritic keys.

In education, Northern Sami, and to a more limited degree, Inari and Skolt Sami, can be studied at primary and secondary levels, both as a mothertongue (for native speakers) and as a foreign language (for non-native speakers).In Russia, Sámi has no official status, neither on the national, regional or local level.

The cultural influence of the majority language spoken around the Sámi is also reflected in the words used for the different country names.