Samboka
What is Samboka?
Samboka is a constructed Uralic language. It was created to help people to get to know Uralic languages easier.
The Uralic language family is vast. It spans from the Arctic sea to the Carpathian basin and from the east side of the Ural mountains to the Baltic sea. All Uralic languages descend from the same original language, Proto-Uralic, that probably was spoken about 5.000 years ago somewhere between the Volga and Yenisei rivers.
Samboka has been constructed so that it could have descended naturally from the Proto-Uralic language as the language of some wondering tribe. Samboka is a kind of interlanguage. It has features that are common to all Uralic languages. It is reminiscent of Finno-Ugric languages, as the following sentence exemplifies.
| Samboka | Eleva kala ujs ved alna. |
|---|---|
| Finnish | Elävä kala ui veden alla. |
| Hungarian | Eleven hal úszik a víz alatt. |
| Estonian | Elav kala ujub vee all. |
| Võro | Eläv kala ujos vii all. |
| Mokshen | Эряй кал ведь ала уйи. (Erjai kal vedj ala uji.) |
| Erzya | Эриця кал ведь ало уйи. (Eritsja kal vedj alo uji.) |
| Mari | Илыше кол вӱд йымaлне ия. (Ilïše kol vüd jïmalne ija.) |
| Udmurt | Улеп чориг ву улын уя. (Ulep čorĭg vu ulĭn uja.) |
| English | A living fish swims under the water. |
Works in Samboka
Eye of the Fen
A short film called Eye of the Fen has been filmed entirely in Samboka.
EYE OF THE FEN (dir. Topi Raulo, 2023, 20 min)
Far in the future lives a Finno-Ugric people, whose life is overshadowed by disasters of the past. One thing is still constant: human desire to ask questions and seek the truth.Eye of the Fen is an allegory for questions, against answers. It is completely spoken in the Samboka language, which is a Finno-Ugric language of the future.
Poems
There are three poems by Yelling Rosa in Samboka.
(c) Risto Kupsala, 2023