in weak forms, e.g. kool , 'school (nom.)' vs. kooli 'school (gen.)'. Samic languages Gradation was present in Proto-Samic, and is inherited in most Samic languages. It is different from the gradation found in the Finnic languages in some important aspects: Gradation applies to all consonants, even consonant clusters. Geminate stops and affricates were realised with preaspiration in Proto-Samic, and were thus phonetically distinct from singletons in more than length alone. Rather than featuring lenition in the weak grade, the weak grade generally reflects the original consonant. Instead, it is the strong grade that was modified: single consonants were lengthened into half-long in the strong grade, geminate consonants were lengthened to overlong. It only applies in consonants at the end of a stressed syllable; consonants following unstressed syllables remain unlengthened and do not show grade alternations. Similar to the cases of Veps and Livonian within Finnic, the Southern Sami language at the westernmost end of the Sami language continuum has lost all gradation. In the remaining Sami languages, the strong grade of the singletons merged with the weak grade of geminates, creating a three-quantity distinction between short, long and overlong consonants. In Kildin and Ter Sami, this merger did not affect stops and affricates, due to the additional preaspiration found on original geminates. In the others, the merger affected stops and affricates as well, with the strong grade of singletons receiving secondary preaspiration. In the Western Samic languages, geminate nasals became pre-stopped, which affected the strong grade of singletons as well (outside Southern Sami) due to the historical merger of these grades. In the languages in closest contact to Finnic (Northern, Inari and Skolt), a number of developments towards the situation in Finnish and Karelian have occurred, such as the change of unlengthened *t to . Northern Sami Northern Sami has a system of three phonological lengths for consonants, and thus has extensive sets of alternations. Quantity 3 is represented as lengthening of the coda part of a geminate or cluster, which is absent in quantity 2. Quantity 1 consists of only an onset consonant, with the preceding syllable having no coda. In addition, most dialects of Northern Sami feature coda maximisation, which geminates the last member of a cluster in various environments (most commonly in two-consonant clusters of quantity 2, in which the first member is voiced). Most sonorants and fricatives are only subject to quantitative gradation, but nasals,