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52-455: The name qaniujaaqpait [qaniujaːqpaˈit] derives from the root qaniq , meaning "mouth". The alternative, Latin-based writing system is named qaliujaaqpait ( ᖃᓕᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ ), and it derives from qaliit , a word describing the markings or the grain in rocks. Titirausiq nutaaq [titiʁauˈsiq nuˈtaːq] meaning "new writing system" is to be seen in contrast to titirausiit nutaunngittut ( ᑎᑎᕋᐅᓰᑦ ᓄᑕᐅᓐᖏᑦᑐᑦ ),

104-717: A closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador . The Inuit languages are one of the two branches of the Eskimoan language family , the other being the Yupik languages , which are spoken in Alaska and the Russian Far East . Most Inuit people live in one of three countries: Greenland ,

156-416: A fairly closely linked set of languages which can be broken up using a number of different criteria. Traditionally, Inuit describe dialect differences by means of place names to describe local idiosyncrasies in language: The dialect of Igloolik versus the dialect of Iqaluit , for example. However, political and sociological divisions are increasingly the principal criteria for describing different variants of

208-510: A fully inflected verb: "he studies", but can also be interpreted as a noun: "student". That said, the meaning is probably obvious to a fluent speaker, when put in context. The morphology and syntax of the Inuit languages vary to some degree between dialects, and the article Inuit grammar describes primarily central Nunavut dialects, but the basic principles will generally apply to all of them and to some degree to Yupik languages as well. Both

260-572: A great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it. In Greenland the official form of Inuit language, and the official language of the state, is called Kalaallisut . In other languages, it is often called Greenlandic or some cognate term. The Inuit languages of Alaska are called Inupiatun , but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them Qawiaraq , or for some dialects, Bering Strait Inupiatun . In Canada,

312-795: A root morpheme to which other morphemes are suffixed. The language has hundreds of distinct suffixes, in some dialects as many as 700. Fortunately for learners, the language has a highly regular morphology. Although the rules are sometimes very complicated, they do not have exceptions in the sense that English and other Indo-European languages do. This system makes words very long, and potentially unique. For example, in central Nunavut Inuktitut : tusaa- to hear -tsiaq- well -junnaq- be able to -nngit- not -tualuu- very much -junga 1SG . PRES . IND . NSP tusaa- -tsiaq- -junnaq- -nngit- -tualuu- -junga {to hear} well {be able to} not {very much} 1SG.PRES.IND. NSP I cannot hear very well. This sort of word construction

364-1008: A self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark ; Canada, specifically in Nunavut , the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories , the Nunavik region of Quebec , and the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador; and the United States, specifically in northern and western Alaska. The total population of Inuit speaking their traditional languages is difficult to assess with precision, since most counts rely on self-reported census data that may not accurately reflect usage or competence. Greenland census estimates place

416-590: Is not accurate, and results from a misunderstanding of the nature of polysynthetic languages. In fact, the Inuit have only a few base roots for snow: 'qanniq-' ('qanik-' in some dialects), which is used most often like the verb to snow , and 'aput', which means snow as a substance. Parts of speech work very differently in the Inuit language than in English, so these definitions are somewhat misleading. The Inuit languages can form very long words by adding more and more descriptive affixes to words. Those affixes may modify

468-574: Is pervasive in the Inuit languages and makes them very unlike English. In one large Canadian corpus – the Nunavut Hansard – 92% of all words appear only once, in contrast to a small percentage in most English corpora of similar size. This makes the application of Zipf's law quite difficult in the Inuit language. Furthermore, the notion of a part of speech can be somewhat complicated in the Inuit languages. Fully inflected verbs can be interpreted as nouns. The word ilisaijuq can be interpreted as

520-636: Is set on Kugmallit Bay, near the Mackenzie River Delta. It has the only deepwater port in the ISR. Ulukhaktok , formerly known as "Holman", is located on the west coast of Victoria Island . Printmaking has taken over as the primary source of income in recent years. Herschel Island , which is uninhabited, is part of the ISR although in Yukon and was traditionally used by the Inuvialuit. English

572-706: Is spoken in the entire region. Additionally, Siglitun is spoken in Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour and Tuktoyaktuk. Uummarmiutun is spoken in Inuvik and Aklavik. Inuinnaqtun is spoken in Ulukhaktok and nowhere else in the Northwest Territories. Together they are grouped under Inuvialuktun . The Inuvialuit Renewable Resource Conservation and Management Plan sets the strategy for fish and wildlife management and conservation. Integrated management planning of

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624-471: The retroflex , which was present in proto-Inuit language. Retroflexes have disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects. In Natsilingmiutut, the voiced palatal stop /ɟ/ derives from a former retroflex. Almost all Inuit language variants have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. The only exceptions are at the extreme edges of

676-606: The Arctic Archipelago , which had been occupied by people of the Dorset culture since the beginning of the 2nd millennium . By 1300, the Inuit and their language had reached western Greenland, and finally east Greenland roughly at the same time the Viking colonies in southern Greenland disappeared. It is generally believed that it was during this centuries-long eastward migration that the Inuit language became distinct from

728-683: The Arctic Ocean , is the region's administrative centre, home to the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. The only other inland community, Aklavik , is located on the Peel Channel. Hunting, fishing and trapping are the major economic activities of Paulatuk , in Amundsen Gulf 's Darnley Bay , and Sachs Harbour , the only permanent settlement on Banks Island . Tuktoyaktuk , formerly known as "Port Brabant",

780-677: The Uralic languages of western Siberia and northern Europe, in a proposed Uralo-Siberian grouping, or even to the Indo-European languages as part of a Nostratic superphylum. Some had previously lumped them in with the Paleosiberian languages , though that is a geographic rather than a linguistic grouping. Early forms of the Inuit language are believed to have been spoken by the Thule people , who migrated east from Beringia towards

832-506: The a form with a stand-alone letter ᐃ i. This fourth-vowel variant had been removed so that Inuktitut could be typed and printed using IBM Selectric balls in the 1970s. The reinstatement was justified on the grounds that modern printing and typesetting equipment no longer suffers the restrictions of earlier typewriting machinery. The ai-pai-tai column is used only in Nunavik. Inuit languages#Writing The Inuit languages are

884-642: The "old syllabics" used before the reforms of 1976. Inuktitut is one variation on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics , and can be digitally encoded using the Unicode standard. The Unicode block for Inuktitut characters is called Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics . The first efforts to write Inuktitut came from Moravian missionaries in Greenland and Labrador in the mid-19th century using Latin script. The first book printed in Inuktitut using Cree script

936-590: The 1870s, Edmund Peck , another Anglican missionary, started printing according to that standard. Other missionaries, and later linguists in the employ of the Canadian and American governments, adapted the Latin alphabet to the dialects of the Mackenzie River delta, the western Arctic islands and Alaska . The Inuktitut script ( titirausiq nutaaq ) is commonly presented as a syllabary . The dots on

988-530: The 1920s, changes in lifestyle and serious epidemics like tuberculosis made the government of Canada interested in tracking the Inuit of Canada's Arctic. Traditionally Inuit names reflect what is important in Inuit culture: environment, landscape, seascape, family, animals, birds, spirits. However these traditional names were difficult for non-Inuit to parse. Also, the agglutinative nature of Inuit language meant that names seemed long and were difficult for southern bureaucrats and missionaries to pronounce. Thus, in

1040-417: The 1940s, the Inuit were given disc numbers , recorded on a special leather ID tag, like a dog tag . They were required to keep the tag with them always. (Some tags are now so old and worn that the number is polished out.) The numbers were assigned with a letter prefix that indicated location (E = east), community, and then the order in which the census-taker saw the individual. In some ways this state renaming

1092-534: The Danish state church) in Greenland. Several major dictionaries were created, beginning with Poul Egedes's Dictionarium Grönlandico-danico-latinum (1750) and culminating with Samuel Kleinschmidt's (1871) "Den grønlandske ordbog" (Transl. "The Greenlandic Dictionary"), which contained a Greenlandic grammatical system that has formed the basis of modern Greenlandic grammar. Together with the fact that until 1925 Danish

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1144-602: The ISR is represented by Nunakput , the territorial electoral district , meaning "our land" in Inuvialuktun . The ISR is one of the four Inuit regions of Canada, collectively known as Inuit Nunangat , represented by the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK). The other regions include Nunatsiavut in Labrador , Nunavik in northern Quebec , and the territory of Nunavut . The ISR is the homeland of

1196-689: The ISR population was 5,336 people, of which 3,110 were Inuvialuit and formed a majority in all six communities. There are no communities in the Yukon North Slope. Of the six communities in the ISR all are located in the Northwest Territories and, along with Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic , form the Inuvik Region . Inuvik , located on the East Channel of the Mackenzie Delta, approximately 100 km (62 mi) from

1248-431: The Inuit language into specific member languages since it forms a dialect continuum . Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely its neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level. As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for its own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating

1300-478: The Inuit languages because of their links to different writing systems, literary traditions, schools, media sources and borrowed vocabulary. This makes any partition of the Inuit language somewhat problematic. This article will use labels that try to synthesise linguistic, sociolinguistic and political considerations in splitting up the Inuit dialect spectrum. This scheme is not the only one used or necessarily one used by Inuit themselves, but its labels do try to reflect

1352-508: The Inuit world: parts of Greenland, and in western Alaska. The Inuit languages, like other Eskimo–Aleut languages, have very rich morphological systems in which a succession of different morphemes are added to root words (like verb endings in European languages) to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language ) All Inuit words begin with

1404-582: The Inuvialuit Settlement Region report. There are several protected parks and bird sanctuaries in the ISR. There are five parks: Aulavik National Park , Herschel Island Territorial Park, Ivvavik National Park , Pingo Canadian Landmark , and Tuktut Nogait National Park . There are also four bird sanctuaries : Anderson River Delta Migratory Bird Sanctuary, Banks Island No. 1 Bird Sanctuary, Cape Perry Migratory Bird Sanctuary, and Kendall Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary The area

1456-653: The Inuvialuit. The Inuvialuit Regional Corporation , established in 1986 as the receiver of the lands and financial compensation of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, is controlled by the Inuvialuit population and is responsible for ISR operations. From 1996 until 2016, Nellie Cournoyea , former Premier of the Northwest Territories , was the Chair and CEO of the Board. She had been elected nine times before declining to run again. In 2016, Duane Ningaqsiq Smith,

1508-594: The Iñupiaq, with most of them over the age of 40. Alaskan Inupiat speak three distinct dialects, which have difficult mutual intelligibility: The Inuit languages are official in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (the dominant language in the latter); have a high level of official support in Nunavik , a semi-autonomous portion of Quebec ; and are still spoken in some parts of Labrador . Generally, Canadians refer to all dialects spoken in Canada as Inuktitut , but

1560-636: The Yupik languages spoken in Western Alaska and Chukotka. Until 1902, a possible enclave of the Dorset, the Sadlermiut (in modern Inuktitut spelling Sallirmiut ), existed on Southampton Island . Almost nothing is known about their language, but the few eyewitness accounts tell of them speaking a "strange dialect". This suggests that they also spoke an Inuit language, but one quite distinct from

1612-627: The article on Eskimo for more information on this word. The Inuit languages constitute a branch of the Eskimo–Aleut language family . They are closely related to the Yupik languages and more remotely to Aleut . These other languages are all spoken in western Alaska , United States, and eastern Chukotka , Russia. They are not discernibly related to other indigenous languages of the Americas or northeast Asia, although there have been some unsubstantiated proposals that they are distantly related to

Inuktitut syllabics - Misplaced Pages Continue

1664-621: The characteristics of that animal: "Nanuq" or "Nanoq" in Kalaallisut (polar-bear), "Uqalik" or "Ukaleq" in Kalaallisut (Arctic hare), and "Tiriaq" or "Teriaq" in Kalaallisut (mouse) are favourites. In other cases, Inuit are named after dead people or people in traditional tales, by naming them after anatomical traits those people are believed to have had. Examples include "Itigaituk" (has no feet), "Anana" or "Anaana" (mother), "Piujuq" (beautiful) and "Tulimak" (rib). Inuit may have any number of names, given by parents and other community members. In

1716-480: The forms spoken in Canada today. The Yupik and Inuit languages are very similar syntactically and morphologically. Their common origin can be seen in a number of cognates: The western Alaskan variants retain a large number of features present in proto-Inuit language and in Yup'ik, enough so that they might be classed as Yup'ik languages if they were viewed in isolation from the larger Inuit world. The Inuit languages are

1768-438: The language is called Inuttut or, often in official documents, by the more descriptive name Labradorimiutut . Furthermore, Canadians – both Inuit and non-Inuit – sometimes use the word Inuktitut to refer to all Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland. The phrase "Inuit language" is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all

1820-415: The largest group outside of North America. Thus, the total population of Inuit speakers is about 100,000 people. The traditional language of the Inuit is a system of closely interrelated dialects that are not readily comprehensible from one end of the Inuit world to the other; some people do not think of it as a single language but rather a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking

1872-483: The letters in the table mark long vowels ; in the Latin transcription, the vowel is doubled. For geminate consonants , the final consonant symbol is placed before the CV syllabic, for instance - kk u-, - nnu - are rendered ᒃ ᑯ and ᓐ ᓄ respectively. The Makivik Corporation expanded the official version of the script to restore the ai-pai-tai column. The common diphthong ai has generally been represented by combining

1924-477: The local variants; or it is used as a descriptive term in publications where readers can't necessarily be expected to know the locally used words. In Nunavut the government groups all dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun under the term Inuktut . Although many people refer to the Inuit language as Eskimo language , this is a broad term that also includes the Yupik languages , and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See

1976-593: The name of a dead person or a class of things, they could take some of their characteristics or powers, and enjoy a part of their identity. (This is why they were always very willing to accept European names: they believed that this made them equal to the Europeans.) Common native names in Canada include "Ujarak" (rock), "Nuvuk" (headland), "Nasak" (hat, or hood), "Tupiq" or "Tupeq" in Kalaallisut (tent), and "Qajaq" ( kayak ). Inuit also use animal names, traditionally believing that by using those names, they took on some of

2028-751: The names of places and people tend to be highly prosaic when translated. Iqaluit , for example, is simply the plural of the noun iqaluk "fish" ("Arctic char", "salmon" or "trout" depending on dialect ). Igloolik ( Iglulik ) means place with houses , a word that could be interpreted as simply town ; Inuvik is place of people ; Baffin Island , Qikiqtaaluk in Inuktitut, translates approximately to "big island". Although practically all Inuit have legal names based on southern naming traditions, at home and among themselves they still use native naming traditions. There too, names tend to consist of highly prosaic words. The Inuit traditionally believed that by adopting

2080-492: The number of Inuit language speakers there at roughly 50,000. According to the 2021 Canadian census , the Inuit population of Canada is 70,540, of which 33,790 report Inuit as their first language. Greenland and Canada account for the bulk of Inuit speakers, although about 7,500 Alaskans speak some variety of an Inuit language out of a total population of over 13,000 Inuit. An estimated 7,000 Greenlandic Inuit live in Denmark ,

2132-429: The region codes (like knowing a telephone area code). Until Inuit began studying in the south, many did not know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. Then in 1969, the government started Project Surname, headed by Abe Okpik , to replace number-names with patrilineal "family surnames". A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for snow . This

Inuktitut syllabics - Misplaced Pages Continue

2184-612: The region's marine and coastal areas is described in the Beaufort Sea Integrated Management Planning Initiative. Wildlife includes Arctic char , Arctic fox , beluga whale , bearded seal , bowhead whale , caribou , moose , muskox , polar bear , ringed seal , and whitefish . Migratory bird management within the ISR is handled by policies, principles, and regulations described in the Conservation of Migratory Birds in

2236-503: The syntactic and semantic properties of the base word, or may add qualifiers to it in much the same way that English uses adjectives or prepositional phrases to qualify nouns (e.g. "falling snow", "blowing snow", "snow on the ground", "snow drift", etc.) Inuvialuit Settlement Region The Inuvialuit Settlement Region , abbreviated as ISR ( Inuinnaqtun : Inuvialuit Nunangit Sannaiqtuaq – INS ; French : Région désignée des Inuvialuit – RDI ), located in Canada's western Arctic ,

2288-478: The terms Inuvialuktun , Inuinnaqtun , and Inuttut (also called Nunatsiavummiutut , Labradorimiutut or Inuttitut ) have some currency in referring to the variants of specific areas. Greenland counts approximately 50,000 speakers of the Inuit languages, over 90% of whom speak west Greenlandic dialects at home. Greenlandic was strongly supported by the Danish Christian mission (conducted by

2340-430: The usages most seen in popular and technical literature. In addition to the territories listed below, some 7,000 Greenlandic speakers are reported to live in mainland Denmark , and according to the 2001 census roughly 200 self-reported Inuktitut native speakers regularly live in parts of Canada which are outside traditional Inuit lands. Of the roughly 13,000 Alaskan Iñupiat , as few as 3000 may still be able to speak

2392-413: The variants of the Northwest Territories are sometimes called Inuvialuktun and have in the past sometimes been called Inuktun . In those dialects, the name is sometimes rendered as Inuktitun to reflect dialectal differences in pronunciation. The Inuit language of Quebec is called Inuttitut by its speakers, and often by other people, but this is a minor variation in pronunciation. In Labrador ,

2444-415: The word Inuktitut is routinely used to refer to all Canadian variants of the Inuit traditional language, and it is under that name that it is recognised as one of the official languages of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories . However, one of the variants of western Nunavut, and the eastern Northwest Territories, is called Inuinnaqtun to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while

2496-451: Was abetted by the churches and missionaries, who viewed the traditional names and their calls to power as related to shamanism and paganism . They encouraged people to take Christian names. So a young woman who was known to her relatives as "Lutaaq, Pilitaq, Palluq, or Inusiq" and had been baptised as "Annie" was under this system to become Annie E7-121 . People adopted the number-names, their family members' numbers, etc., and learned all

2548-580: Was an 8-page pamphlet known as Selections from the Gospels in the dialect of the Inuit of Little Whale River ( ᒋᓴᓯᑊ ᐅᑲᐤᓯᐣᑭᐟ , "Jesus' words"), printed by John Horden in 1855–56 at Moose Factory for Edwin Arthur Watkins to use among the Inuit at Fort George . In November 1865, Horden and Watkins met in London under Henry Venn 's direction to adapt Cree syllabics to the Inuktitut language. In

2600-651: Was designated in 1984 in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement by the Government of Canada for the Inuvialuit people. It spans 90,650 km (35,000 sq mi) of land, mostly above the tree line , and includes several subregions: the Beaufort Sea , the Mackenzie River delta, the northern portion of Yukon ("Yukon North Slope"), and the northwest portion of the Northwest Territories . The ISR includes both Crown Lands and Inuvialuit Private Lands. Most of

2652-580: Was elected to replace her and was re-elected in 2019. The Inuvialuit Settlement Region Database contains descriptions of thousands of publications and research projects about the ISR. It is maintained by the Joint Secretariat—Inuvialuit Renewable Resource Committees and the Arctic Science and Technology Information System. Funding comes from Shell Canada and MGM Energy . In the 2016 Canadian Census ,

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2704-656: Was not taught in the public schools, these policies had the consequence that Greenlandic has always and continues to enjoy a very strong position in Greenland, both as a spoken as well as written language. Eastern Canadian Inuit language variants 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 . The Alaskan dialects have an additional manner of articulation,

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