In Towards a digital infrastructure for Kildin Saami, the German linguist Michael Rießler writes that: “The second new Cyrillic orthography for Kildin Sámi was developed in the 1970s and 1980s by a working group of Sámi teachers and language activists led by the non-Sámi educationalist and linguist Rimma Kuruch. This orthography […] has since been used, in different variants, in dictionaries, in textbooks for elementary schools, as well as in several published literary texts for children and adults, and most recently even in the internet.”Rießler, 2013, pp. 198–199.
The macron length marks above “ä” and “ӭ” are used in natural writing, but not listed in the alphabet. Rießler gives the modifier letter apostrophe (ʼ) and “ҋ” as optional characters for “һ” and “ј” respectively.Rießler, 2013, p. 205.
Kuruch, R. D. (1985). Kratkii grammaticheskii ocherk saamskogo yazyka. [Short grammatical summary of the Saami language]. In N. E. Afanas’eva et al. (Eds.), Saamsko-russkii slovar’ = Sām’-rūšš soagknehk’ [Sámi-Russian Russian–Sámi Dictionary], pp. 529–67. Russkii yazyk.
Kuruch, R. D., Afanas’eva, N. E. & Vinogradova, I. V. (1995). Pravila orfografii i punktuatsii saamskogo yazyka [Orthographic rules of the Saami language]. Murmanskii sektor lingvisticheskikh problem finnougorskikh narodnostei Krainego Severa Instituta Yazykoznaniia Rossiisskoi Akademii nauk.
Rießler, M. (2013). Towards a digital infrastructure for Kildin Saami. In E. Kasten & T. de Graaf (Eds.), Sustaining Indigenous Knowledge: Learning Tools and Community Initiatives for Preserving Endangered Languages and Local Cultural Heritage, pp. 195–218. Kulturstiftung Sibirien. Retreived 20 September 2026 from erepo.uef.fi