The language of the Inuit people is traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador. It was also to some degree spoken in far eastern Russia, particularly the Diomede Islands, but is almost certainly extinct in Russia today. The Inuit live primarily in three countries: Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark), Canada, and the American state of Alaska. Inuit (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, singular Inuk or Inuq / ᐃᓄᒃ) is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic coasts of Siberia, Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Québec, Labrador and Greenland. ... World map showing North America A satellite composite image of North America North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the... The red line indicates the 10°C isotherm in July, commonly used to define the Arctic region border The Arctic is the area around the Earths North Pole. ... The subarctic is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic and covering much of Canada and Siberia, the north of Scandinavia, northern Mongolia and the extreme north of Heilongjiang. ... This article is about the region in Canada. ... Satellite photo of the Bering Strait, with the Diomede Islands at center. ... State nickname: The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun Official languages English Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Governor Frank Murkowski (R) Senators Ted Stevens (R) Lisa Murkowski (R) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 663,267 mi² / 1,717,854 km² 13. ...

The total population of Inuit speaking their traditional language 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 the number of speakers of Inuit dialects there at roughly 50,000, while Canadian estimates are at roughly 30,000. These two countries count the bulk of speakers of Inuit language variants, as usage in Alaska is increasingly moribund - roughly 3,000 Alaskans speak Inuit dialects out of a population of over 13,000 Inuit - and the language is almost certainly extinct in Russia. In addition, an estimated 7,000 Greenlandic Inuit live in European Denmark, but this is the largest group outside of Canada and Greenland. So, the global population of speakers of Inuit language variants is on the order of 90,000 people.

What is the Inuit language called?

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, and some people do not think of it as a single language but rather as a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking the Inuit language into specific member tongues, since it forms a continuum of close dialects. Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely their neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level.

As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for their own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating a great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it.

In Greenland, the official form of Inuit language, and one of the official languages of the state, is called Kalaallisut. In other languages, it is often called Greenlandic or some cognate term. However, neither the words Kallaalisut nor Greenlandic are generally used to refer to the variants of Canada or Alaska. In Alaska, the language is 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 Straits Inupiatun. The Kalaallisut language (also called Greenlandic, Greenlandic Eskimo, or Greenlandic Inuktitut) is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to Canadian languages like Inuktitut. ... Inupiaq, Iñupiaq, Inupiak or Inupiatun is a group of dialects of the Inuit language spoken in northern and northwestern Alaska. ... The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula in western Alaska. ... Satellite photo of the Bering Strait Bering Strait is also a country music band The Bering Strait is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, the eastmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost point of the American continent, about 85 km in width, with a...

In Canada, 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 is called Inuinnaqtun to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while 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 dialectical 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, the language is called Inuttut or, often in offical documents, by the more descriptive name Labradorimiutut. Furthermore, Canadians - both Inuit and non-Inuit - sometimes use the word Inuktitut to refer to all of the Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland. Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Motto: Nunavut Sannginivut (Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength) Official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, French Capital Iqaluit Largest city Iqaluit Commissioner Ann Meekitjuk Hanson Premier Paul Okalik (independent) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 Nancy Karetak-Lindell 1 Willie Adams Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 2... Motto: None Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Yellowknife Largest city Yellowknife Commissioner Tony Whitford Premier Joe Handley (Consensus government - no party affiliations) Area 1,346,106 km² (3rd) Land 1,183,085 km² Water 163,021 km² (12. ... Inuinnaqtun is an indigenous language of Canada. ... Inuvialuktun is a word routinely used to describe the variety of the language of the Inuit spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by a band of Canadian Inuit who call themselves Inuvialuit. ... The first European explorer to reach Quebec was Jacques Cartier, who planted a cross either in the Gaspé in 1534 or at Old Fort Bay on the Lower North Shore and sailed into the St. ... This article is about the region in Canada. ...

The phrase "Inuit language" is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all 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. But, this means that while you can call the French language French, you cannot call the Inuit language Inuit. Saying "Peter speaks Inuit" is a very strange usage that most people who are familiar with the Inuit language would recognise as suspect, comparable to asserting that Hispanics must speak "Hispanic". The word Inuit is generally reserved for the ethnic group, both from its Inuit language meaning - it refers specifically to a group of people - and in the way the word has been adopted in English. French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... Hispanic, as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorize persons whose ancestry hails either from Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, or the original settlers of the traditionally Spanish-held Southwestern United States. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Although many people refer to the Inuit language as Eskimo language, this is an ambiguous term that can also include Yupik (see Eskimo-Aleut languages), and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See the article on Eskimo for more information on this word. The Yupik people speak five distinct languages, depending on their location. ... Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Eskimo or Esquimau is a term used for a group of people who inhabit the circumpolar region (excluding circumpolar Scandinavia and all but the easternmost portions of Russia). ...

Classification and history

The language of the Inuit is an Eskimo-Aleut language. It is fairly closely related to the Yupik languages, and more remotely to the Aleut languages. These cousin languages are all spoken in Western Alaska and Eastern Chukotka, Russia. It is not discernibly related to other North American or northwest Asian indigenous languages, although some have proposed that it is related to Indo-European languages as part of the hypothetical Nostratic superphylum, and there are those who consider it a Paleo-Siberian language, although that is more a geographic than a linguistic grouping. Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... The Yupik people speak five distinct languages, depending on their location. ... // Headline text Headline text hghjhhjffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffAleut is a language of the Eskimo-Aleut language phylum. ... State nickname: The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun Official languages English Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Governor Frank Murkowski (R) Senators Ted Stevens (R) Lisa Murkowski (R) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 663,267 mi² / 1,717,854 km² 13. ... Chukotka Autonomous District (Russian: , tr. ... Native American languages are the indigenous languages of the Americas, spoken by Native Americans from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland. ... There are a wide variety of languages spoken throughout Asia, comprising a number of families and unrelated isolate languages. ... The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects, including most of the major language families of Europe, as well as many languages of Southwest and South Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... Nostratic is a highly controversial language super-family that putatively links many Eurasian language families. ... Paleosiberian (Palaeosiberian, Paleo-Siberian) languages or Paleoasian languages (from Greek palaios, ancient) is a term of convenience used in linguistics to classify a disparate group of languages spoken in remote regions of Siberia. ...

Early forms of the Inuit language were spoken by the Thule people, who overran the Dorset civilisation, which had previously occupied Arctic America, at the beginning of the second millennium. By 1300, the Inuit and their language had reached western Greenland, and finally east Greenland roughly at the same time the Viking colony in southern Greenland disappeared. It is generally believed that it was during this centuries-long eastwards migration that the Inuit language became distinct from the Yupik languages spoken in Western Alaska and Chukotka. The Thule were the ancestors of all modern Canadian Inuit. ... The Dorset culture preceded the Inuit culture in Arctic North America. ... (1st millennium – 2nd millennium – 3rd millennium – other millennia) Events The Black Death Mongol Empires in Asia The Renaissance in Europe The Protestant Reformation The agricultural and industrial revolutions The rise of nationalism and the nation state European discovery of the Americas and Australia and their colonization European colonization and decolonization... Events Beginning of the Renaissance. ... The name Viking is a borrowed word from the native Scandinavian term for the Norse warriors who raided the coasts of Scandinavia, the British Isles, and other parts of Europe from the late 8th century to the 11th century. ... The Yupik people speak five distinct languages, depending on their location. ...

Until 1902, an enclave of Dorset people or 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 Eskimo-Aleut language, but one quite distinct from the forms spoken in Canada today. 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... The Dorset culture preceded the Inuit culture in Arctic North America. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Categories: Islands of Canada | Canada geography stubs ... Eskimo-Aleut (also called Inuit-Aleut, but both names are considered offensive by some) is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ...

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.

Geographic distribution and variants

Distribution of Inuit language variants across the Arctic.

The Inuit language is a fairly closely linked set of dialects which can be broken up using a number of different criteria. Traditionally, Inuit describe dialect differences by means of place names to describe local idiosyncracies in language: The dialect of Iglulik versus the dialect of Iqaluit, for example. However, political and sociological divisions are increasingly the principal criteria for describing different variants of the Inuit language 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 the usages most seen in popular and technical literature. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Igloolik, sometimes spelled Iglulik, is a community in Nunavut, northern Canada. ... Iqaluit (ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ in Inuktitut) is the territorial capital and the largest community of Canadas youngest territory, Nunavut. ...

In addition to the territories listed below, some 7,000 Greenlandic speakers are reported to live in mainland Denmark [1], and according to the 2001 census roughly 200 self-reported Inuktitut native speakers regularly live in parts of Canada which are outside of traditional Inuit lands.

Alaska

See Inupiatun and Qawiaraq for more information. Inupiaq, Iñupiaq, Inupiak or Inupiatun is a group of dialects of the Inuit language spoken in northern and northwestern Alaska. ...

Of the roughly 13,000 Alaskan Inupiat, as few as 3,000 may still be able to speak Inuit language variants, with most of them over the age of 40. [2] Alaskan Inuit speak at least two fairly distinct dialects: The Inupiat or Iñupiaq are the Inuit people of Alaskas Northwest Arctic and North Slope boroughs and the Bering Straits region. ...

• Qawiaraq is spoken on the southern side of the Seward Peninsula and the Norton Sound area. It was also in the past spoken in Chukotka, particularly Big Diomede island, but appears to have vanished in Russian areas through assimilation into Yupik, Chukchi and Russian speaking communities. It is radically different in phonology from other Inuit language variants. Some people consider the Bering Strait dialect to be separate from Qawariaq.
• Inupiatun is spoken in North Slope and the Kotzebue Sound area. The variants of the Kotzebue Sound area and the northwest of Alaska are sometimes called Malimiutun or Malimiut Inupiatun. However, despite significant differences in phonology, Malimiutun is readily comprehensible to other Alaskan Inupiat. [3]

The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula in western Alaska. ... The Norton Sound is an inlet of the Bering Sea in western Alaska, south of the Seward Peninsula. ... Chukotka Autonomous District (Russian: , tr. ... Satellite photo of the Bering Strait, with the Diomede Islands at center. ... The Yupik or, in the Central Alaskan language, Yupik, are indigenous or aboriginal peoples who live along the coast of western Alaska, especially on the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta and along the Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan Yupik), in southern Alaska (the Alutiiq) and in the Russian Far East and St. ... The term Chukchi may refer to Chukchi people Chukchi language This is a disambiguation page—a list of articles associated with the same title. ... Satellite photo of the Bering Strait Nautical chart of the Bering Strait The Bering Strait is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, the eastmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost point of the American continent, approximately 85 km (58 mi) in width, with a... Inupiaq, Iñupiaq, Inupiak or Inupiatun is a group of dialects of the Inuit language spoken in northern and northwestern Alaska. ... North Slope can refer to: Alaska North Slope North Slope Borough, Alaska This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Kotzebue Sound is an arm of the Chukchi Sea in western Alaska, 66°40 North 163° West. ... Kotzebue Sound is an arm of the Chukchi Sea in western Alaska, 66°40 North 163° West. ... The Inupiat or Iñupiaq are the Inuit people of Alaskas Northwest Arctic and North Slope boroughs and the Bering Straits region. ...

Canada

See Inuktitut for more information. Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

The Inuit language is an official language in the Northwest Territories, the official and dominant language of Nunavut, enjoys a high level of official support in Nunavik, a semi-autonomus portion of Quebec, and is still spoken in some parts of Labrador. Generally, Canadians refer to all dialects spoken in Canada as Inuktitut, but the terms Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun and Labradorimiutut have some currency in refering to the variants of specific areas. Motto: None Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Yellowknife Largest city Yellowknife Commissioner Tony Whitford Premier Joe Handley (Consensus government - no party affiliations) Area 1,346,106 km² (3rd) Land 1,183,085 km² Water 163,021 km² (12. ... Motto: Nunavut Sannginivut (Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength) Official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, French Capital Iqaluit Largest city Iqaluit Commissioner Ann Meekitjuk Hanson Premier Paul Okalik (independent) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 Nancy Karetak-Lindell 1 Willie Adams Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 2... The Nunavik Region of Quebec, Canada Nunavik (ᓄᓇᕕᒃ) is a region making up the northern third of the province of Quebec, Canada. ... The first European explorer to reach Quebec was Jacques Cartier, who planted a cross either in the Gaspé in 1534 or at Old Fort Bay on the Lower North Shore and sailed into the St. ... This article is about the region in Canada. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Inuvialuktun is a word routinely used to describe the variety of the language of the Inuit spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by a band of Canadian Inuit who call themselves Inuvialuit. ... Inuinnaqtun is an indigenous language of Canada. ...

Greenland

See Kalaallisut for more information. The Kalaallisut language (also called Greenlandic, Greenlandic Eskimo, or Greenlandic Inuktitut) is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to Canadian languages like Inuktitut. ...

Greenland counts approximately 50,000 speakers of Inuit language variants, of whom over 90% speak west Greenlandic dialects at home.

• Kalaallisut, or in English Greenlandic, is the name given to the standard dialect and official language of Greenland. This standard national language is now taught to all Greenlanders in school, regardless of their native dialect. It reflects almost exclusively the language of western Greenland and has borrowed a great deal of vocabulary from Danish, while Canadian and Alaskan Inuit language variants have tended to take vocabulary from English or sometimes French and Russian. It is written using the Roman alphabet. The dialect of the Upernavik area in northwest Greenland is somewhat different in phonology from the standard dialect.
• Tunumiit oraasiat, (or Tunumiisut in Kalaallisut, often East Greenlandic in other languages), is the dialect of eastern Greenland. It differs sharply from other Inuit language variants and has roughly 3,000 speakers according to Ethnologue.
• Avanersuaq is the dialect of the area around Qaanaaq in northern Greenland. It is sometimes called the Thule dialect or North Greenlandic. This area is the northernmost settlement area of the Inuit and has a relatively small number of speakers. It is reputed to be fairly close to the North Baffin dialect, since a group of migratory Inuit from Baffin Island settled in the area during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It counts under 1,000 speakers according to Ethnologue.

The Kalaallisut language (also called Greenlandic, Greenlandic Eskimo, or Greenlandic Inuktitut) is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to Canadian languages like Inuktitut. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Upernavik is a small town on th west coast ofGreenland. ... Map of Greenland Qaanaaq (roughly pronounced KAH-nahk), formerly Thule, is a town and municipality in northwestern Greenland. ... Baffin Island, Nunavut. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the...

Phonology and Phonetics

See main article Inuit language phonology and phonetics. This article makes reference primarily to the Inuktitut dialects of Canada, although it provides some discussion of other dialects. ...

Eastern Canadian Inuit language variants have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short). Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...

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, the retroflex, which was present in proto-Inuit language. Retroflexes have disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects, except for the phoneme /ɟ/ in Natsilingmiutut, which derives from a former retroflex. Places of articulation (passive & active): 1. ... In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... In speech there are different ways of producing a consonant. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. ... The nasals are a pair of bones in the skull of many animals. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up and back so the bottom of the tip touches the roof of the mouth. ... The voiced palatal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

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 the Inuit world - parts of Greenland, and in western Alaska.

Morphology and syntax

See Inuit language morphology and syntax for a more detailed description specific to Nunavut Inuktitut.

The Inuit language, 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 serveral words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language) All Inuit language words begin with 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 the 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. Eskimo-Aleut (also called Inuit-Aleut, but both names are considered offensive by some) is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i. ... The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects, including most of the major language families of Europe, as well as many languages of Southwest and South Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ...

This system makes words very long, and potentially unique. For example in central Nunavut Inuktitut: Motto: Nunavut Sannginivut (Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength) Official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, French Capital Iqaluit Largest city Iqaluit Commissioner Ann Meekitjuk Hanson Premier Paul Okalik (independent) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 Nancy Karetak-Lindell 1 Willie Adams Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 2... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

tusaatsiarunnanngittualuujunga

I can't hear very well.

This long word is composed of a root word tusaa- - to hear - followed by five suffixes:

-tsiaq-	well
-junnaq-	be able to
-nngit-	not
-tualuu-	very much
-junga	1st pers. singular present indicative non-specific

This sort of word construction is pervasive in Inuit language and makes it 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 language. Fully inflected verbs can be interpreted as nouns. The word ilisaijuq can be interpreted as a fully inflected verb - "he studies" - but can also be interpreted as a noun: "student". Motto: Nunavut Sannginivut (Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength) Official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, French Capital Iqaluit Largest city Iqaluit Commissioner Ann Meekitjuk Hanson Premier Paul Okalik (independent) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 Nancy Karetak-Lindell 1 Willie Adams Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 2... Hansard is the traditional name for the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. ... This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. ... In grammar, a part of speech or word class is defined as the role that a word (or sometimes a phrase) plays in a sentence. ...

The morphology and syntax of the Inuit language vary to some degree between dialects, and the article Inuit language morphology and syntax describes primarily central Nunavut dialects, but the basic principles will generally apply to all of them and to some degree to Yupik as well. Motto: Nunavut Sannginivut (Inuktitut: Nunavut our strength or Our land our strength) Official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English, French Capital Iqaluit Largest city Iqaluit Commissioner Ann Meekitjuk Hanson Premier Paul Okalik (independent) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 Nancy Karetak-Lindell 1 Willie Adams Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 2... The Yupik or, in the Central Alaskan language, Yupik, are indigenous or aboriginal peoples who live along the coast of western Alaska, especially on the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta and along the Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan Yupik), in southern Alaska (the Alutiiq) and in the Russian Far East and St. ...

Vocabulary

Toponymy and Names

Exotic as traditional Inuit names sound, both 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". Iglulik simply means place with houses, a word that could be interpreted as simply town; Inuvik is place of people; Baffin Island - Qikiqtaaluk in Inuit language - approximately translates to "big island". Iqaluit (ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ in Inuktitut) is the territorial capital and the largest community of Canadas youngest territory, Nunavut. ... Igloolik, sometimes spelled Iglulik, is a community in Nunavut, northern Canada. ... Inuvik is a small town in the Northwest Territories of Canada. ... Baffin Island, Nunavut. ...

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 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 "Ujaraq" (rock), "Nuvuk" (headland), "Nasak" (hat, or hood), "Tupiq" (tent), and "Qajaq" (kayak). Inuit also use animal names, traditionally believing that by using those names, they took on some of the characteristics of that animal: "Nanuq" (polar-bear), "Uqalik" (Arctic hare), and "Tiriaq" (ermine) 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), "Usuiituk" (has no penis), and "Tulimak" (rib). Inuit may have any number of names, given by parents and other community members. For the Dutch rock band of the same name see Kayak (band) Two whitewater kayakers running the Numbers section of the Arkansas River. ...

Words for snow

See a more thorough discussion at Eskimo words for snow. It is a popular myth that the Eskimo have an unusually high number of words for snow. ...

A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for snow. This 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. Urban Legend is also the name of a 1998 movie. ... The snow in Utah is world famous. ...

The Inuit language can form very long words by adding more and more descriptive affixes to words. Those affixes may modify 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 (eg. "falling snow", "blowing snow", "snow on the ground", "snow drift", etc.) The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

The "fact" that there are many Inuit words for snow has been put forward so often it is somewhat of a journalistic cliché (as evidenced by a collection of quotes from linguist Mark Liberman). A cliché (from French cliché, onomatopoeia for stereotype) originally was a printing term for a semi-permanently assembled piece of type which could easily be inserted into the document being printed (see Block printing). ...

Writing

Because the Inuit language is spread over such a large area, divided between different nations and political units and originally reached by Europeans of different origins at different times, there is no uniform way of writing the Inuit language. Most Inuktitut in Nunavut and Nunavik is written using an scheme called Inuktitut syllabics, based on Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. The western part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories use a Roman alphabet scheme usually identified as Inuinnaqtun. In Alaska, another Roman scheme is used. Nunatsiavut uses another variant devised by German-speaking Moravian missionaries, which included the letter kra. Greenland's Roman scheme was originally much like the one used in Nunatsiavut, but has been reformed and modified in recent years. The Inuktitut syllabary is a writing system used by Inuit people in Nunavut and in northern Quebec. ... Canadian aboriginal syllabic writing (often syllabics for short) is a family of writing schemes which are used to write a number of aboriginal Canadian languages from the Algonquian, Athabaskan and Inuit language families. ... Motto: None Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Yellowknife Largest city Yellowknife Commissioner Tony Whitford Premier Joe Handley (Consensus government - no party affiliations) Area 1,346,106 km² (3rd) Land 1,183,085 km² Water 163,021 km² (12. ... Inuinnaqtun is an indigenous language of Canada. ... State nickname: The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun Official languages English Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Governor Frank Murkowski (R) Senators Ted Stevens (R) Lisa Murkowski (R) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 1st 663,267 mi² / 1,717,854 km² 13. ... Capital Hopedale (legislative) Nain (administrative) Area Total Recognized 142,450 km² 72,520 km² Nunatsiavut is an area claimed by the Inuit in Canada - not to be confused with the territory Nunavut. ... A Moravian can be: an ethnic group a Christian denomination This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Kra (ĸ) is a character used when writing the Kalaallisut language spoken in Greenland. ...

The Canadian syllabary

See Inuktitut syllabics for more information. The Inuktitut syllabary is a writing system used by Inuit people in Nunavut and in northern Quebec. ...

The syllabary used to write Inuktitut (titirausiq nutaaq). The extra characters with the dots represent long vowels; in the Latin transcription, the vowel would be doubled.

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. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Cree camp near Vermilion, Alberta The Cree are an indigenous people of North America whose people range from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean in both Canada and the United States. ... James Evans (January 18, 1801-November 23, 1846) was a Canadian Methodist missionary and amateur linguist. ... The 1970s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1970 and 1979. ... The Inuvialuit (Inuit language: real human beings) are Inuit people who live in the western Canadian Arctic region. ... This article is about the region in Canada. ...

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. A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... These are the astrological glyphs as most commonly used in Western Astrology A glyph is a carved figure or character, incised or in relief; a carved pictograph; hence, a pictograph representing a form originally adopted for sculpture, whether carved or painted. ...

All of the characters needed for the Inuktitut syllabary are available in the Unicode character repertoire. (See Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics character table.) Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics covers the block U+1400 to U+167F in the Unicode standard. ...

See also

• Eskimo-Aleut languages
• Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
• Yupik language

Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Canadian aboriginal syllabic writing (often syllabics for short) is a family of writing schemes which are used to write a number of aboriginal Canadian languages from the Algonquian, Athabaskan and Inuit language families. ... The Yupik people speak five distinct languages, depending on their location. ...

References

• Inuktitut Linguistics for Technocrats, Mick Mallon.
• Introductory Inukitut and Introductory Inuktitut Refernce Grammar, Mick Mallon, 1991. ISBN 0771702302 and ISBN 0771702353
• Inuktitut: A multi-dialectal outline dictionary (with an Aivilingmiutaq base), Alex Spalding, 1998. ISBN 1896204295
• Inuktitut: a Grammar of North Baffin Dialects, Alex Spalding, 1992. ISBN 0920063438
• Arctic Languages: An Awakening, ed: Dirmid R. F. Collis. ISBN 92-3-102661-5 Available in PDF via the UNESCO website.

External links

Dictionaries and lexica

• Inuktitut - English Dictionary
• Nunavut Living Dictionary
• Interactive IñupiaQ Dictionary
• Oqaasileriffik Language database
• Inuktitut Morphology List (PDF)

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Webpages

• A Brief History of Inuktitut Writing Culture
• Inuktitut Syllabarium
• Our Language, Our Selves
• Writing in Inuktitut
• Alt.folkore.urban on Eskimo words for snow.