Inuktitut Totally Explained

Everything about Inuktitut totally explained

, Inuktitut, Inuttitut, Inuktitun, Inuinnaqtun, Inuttut, and other local names |familycolor=Eskimo-Aleut |states= Canada (Nunavut, Nunavik, Northwest Territories, Nunatsiavut) |speakers=35,000 (approx.) |fam2=Inuit |nation= Nunavut, Nunavik, Northwest Territories, Nunatsiavut (Canada) |agency=Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and various other local institutions. |iso1=iu |iso2=iku |lc1=iku|ld1=Inuktitut (generic)|ll1=none |lc2=ike|ld2=Eastern Canadian Inuktitut |lc3=ikt|ld3=Western Canadian Inuktitut}}
Inuktitut (Inuktitut syllabics: (fonts required

), literally "like the Inuit") is the name of the varieties of Inuit language spoken in Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, to some extent in northeastern Manitoba as well as the territories of Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and traditionally on the Arctic Ocean coast of Yukon.
It is recognised as an official language in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. It also has legal recognition in Nunavik — a part of Quebec — thanks in part to the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, and is recognised in the Charter of the French Language as the official language of instruction for Inuit school districts there. It also has some recognition in Nunatsiavut — the Inuit area in Labrador — following the ratification of its agreement with the Government of Canada and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian census estimates that there are roughly 35,000 Inuktitut speakers in Canada, including roughly 200 who live regularly outside of traditionally Inuit lands.

Uummarmiutun: spoken mainly in the communities of Inuvik and Aklavik. This dialect is essentially the same as Alaskan Inupiatun, and is present in Canada because of migration from Alaska in the 1910s, reoccupying traditionally Siglit lands abandoned during the devastating disease outbreaks of the previous century. The Inuvialuktun dialects are seriously endangered, as English has in recent years become the common language of the community. Surveys of Inuktitut usage in the NWT vary, but all agree that usage isn't vigorous. According to the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, only some 10% of the roughly 4,000 Inuvialuit speak any form of Inuktitut, and only some 4% use it at home. Statistics Canada's 2001 Census report is only slightly better, reporting 765 self-identified Inuktitut speakers out of a self-reported Inuvialuit population of 3,905. Considering the large number of non-Inuit living in Inuvialuit areas and the lack of a single common dialect among the already reduced number of speakers, the future of the Inuit language in the NWT appears bleak.

Nunavut

Nunavut encompasses the geographically largest part of the Inuit world (not counting the uninhabitable Greenland ice shield), and includes large mainland areas and numerous islands divided by rivers, straits, Hudson Bay, and areas of ocean that freeze only for a part of the year. Consequently, it's unsurprising that it has a great deal of internal dialect diversity.
Nunavut's basic law lists four official languages: English, French, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, but to what degree Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun can be thought of as separate languages is ambiguous in state policy. The word Inuktitut is often used to describe both.
The demographic situation of Inuktitut is quite strong in Nunavut. Nunavut is the home of some 24,000 Inuit, most of whom - over 80% according to the 2001 census - speak Inuktitut, including some 3,500 people reported as monolinguals. 2001 census data shows that the use of Inuktitut, while lower among the young than the elderly, has stopped declining in Canada as a whole and may even be increasing in Nunavut.

Inuinnaqtun is an Inuit language variant spoken in the western part of the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, and at Ulukhaktok in the Northwest Territories. Although it has a number of features distinguishing it as a specific variant of Inuktitut, the most immediately noticeable is the lack of a local tradition of Inuktitut syllabics use. The government of Nunavut considers Inuinnaqtun an official language of the territory, but many consider it simply a Roman alphabet writing scheme for standard Inuktitut. However, the Roman alphabet writing scheme used in Inuinnaqtun uses letters in a manner distinctive to western Nunavut dialects.

Natsilingmiutut designates variants spoken in the part of eastern Kitikmeot called Natsilik. In the Natsilik dialect, it's called Nattilingmiutut. Some people view the Utkusiksalingmiut dialect, spoken today primarily by the Netsilik Inuit in Kugaaruk but traditionally spoken in the Franklin Lake and Chantrey Inlet area, as a separate dialect.

Kivallirmiutut dialect is spoken in the Kivalliq Region down to the Manitoba border.

Aivilimmiutut is spoken in the area traditionally known as Aivilik: Southampton Island and Repulse Bay in Kivalliq, and part of the Melville Peninsula in the Qikiqtaaluk Region. This area was settled by Inuit after the disappearance of the Sadlermiut in the late 19th and early 20th century. Some linguists consider it too close to North Baffin to merit separate treatment.

Phonology and phonetics

Eastern Canadian dialects of Inuktitut have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short). Consonants are arranged with five places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular; and three manners of articulation: voiceless stops, voiced continuants and nasals, as well as two additional sounds — voiceless fricatives. Natsalingmiutut has an additional consonant /ɟ/, a vestige of the Retroflex consonants that were present in proto-Inuit. Inuinnaqtun has one fewer consonant, as /s/ and /ɬ/ have merged into /h/. All dialects of Inuktitut have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. In Inuujingajut - Nunavut standard Roman orthography - long vowels are written as a double vowel. Inuktitut vowels

	IPA	Inuujingajut	Notes
Short open front unrounded	/a/	a
Long open front unrounded	/aː/	aa
Short closed front unrounded	/i/	i	Short i is sometimes realised as [e] or [ɛ]
Long closed front unrounded	/iː/	ii
Short closed back rounded	/u/	u	Short u is sometimes realised as [o] or [ɔ]
Long closed back rounded	/uː/	uu

Inuktitut consonants in Inuujingajut and notation

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Notes
Voiceless stop	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/	q /q/	All plosives are unaspirated /q/ is sometimes represented with an r
Voiceless fricative		s /s/ ł /ɬ/ (h /h/)				h replaces s in Kivallirmiutut and Natsilingmiutut and replaces both s and ɬ in Inuinnaqtun ɬ is often written as &, or simply as l
Voiced	v /v/	l /l/	j /j/ (j /ɟ/)	g /g/	r /ɢ/	/ɟ/, being absent from most dialects, isn't written with a separate letter /g/ is replaced by [ɣ] in Siglitun, and may be realised as [ɣ] between vowels or vowels and approximants in other dialects /ɢ/ assimilated to [ɴ] before nasals
Nasal	m /m/	n /n/		ng /ŋ/		A geminated ng is written nng

Morphology and syntax

Inuktitut, like other Eskimo-Aleut languages, has a very rich morphological system, in which a succession of different morphemes are added to root words to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language) All words begin with a root morpheme to which other morphemes are suffixed. Inuktitut has hundreds of distinct suffixes, in some dialects as many as 700. Fortunately for the learners, the language has a highly regular morphology. Although the rules are sometimes very complicated, they don't have exceptions in the sense that English and other Indo-European languages do.

Writing

Inuktitut is written in several different ways, depending on the dialect and region, but also on historical and political factors.
   Moravian missionaries, with the purpose of introducing the Inuit peoples to Christianity and the Bible, contributed to the development of an Inuktitut writing system in Greenland during the 1760s that was based on Roman orthography. They later travelled to Labrador in the 1800s, bringing the written Inuktitut with them. This roman alphabet writing scheme is distinguished by its inclusion of the letter kra.
   The Alaskan Yupik and Inupiat (who, in addition, developed their own system of hieroglyphics) and the Siberian Yupik also adopted the system of Roman orthography.
   Eastern Canadian Inuit were the last to adopt the written word when, in the 1860s, missionaries imported the written system Qaniujaaqpait they'd developed in their efforts to convert the Cree to Christianity. The very last Inuit peoples introduced to missionaries and writing were the Netsilik Inuit in Kugaaruk and north Baffin Island. The Netsilik adopted Qaniujaaqpait by the 1920s.
   The "Greenlandic" system has been substantially reformed in recent years, making Labrador writing unique to Nunatsiavummiutut at this time. Most Inuktitut in Nunavut and Nunavik is written using a scheme called Qaniujaaqpait or Inuktitut syllabics, based on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. The western part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories use a Roman orthography (alphabet scheme) usually identified as Inuinnaqtun or Qaliujaaqpait, reflecting the predispositions of the missionaries who reached this area in the late 19th century and early 20th.

The Canadian syllabary

The Inuktitut syllabary used in Canada is based on the Cree syllabary devised by the missionary James Evans. The present form of the syllabary for Canadian Inuktitut was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s. The Inuit in Alaska, the Inuvialuit, Inuinnaqtun speakers, and Inuit in Greenland and Labrador use the Roman alphabet, although it has been adapted for their use in different ways.
Though conventionally called a syllabary, the writing system has been classified by some observers as an abugida, since syllables starting with the same consonant have related glyphs rather than unrelated ones.
All of the characters needed for the Inuktitut syllabary are available in the Unicode character repertoire. (See Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics character table.) The territorial government of Nunavut, Canada has developed a TrueType font called Pigiarniq for computer displays. It was designed by Vancouver-based Tiro Typeworks.

Further Information

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