Introduction to Inuktitut:

Inuktitut is the name of some of the Inuit languages 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 reports that there are roughly 35,000 Inuktitut speakers in Canada, including roughly 200 who live regularly outside of traditionally Inuit lands.

Dialects and variants

Northwest Territories and Yukon

Inuit in Canada's Northwest Territories call themselves Inuvialuit and live primarily in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, consisting of the northern part of the Mackenzie River delta, the Arctic coast of the Northwest Territories and Yukon, Banks Island, a part of Victoria Island and some more remote and irregularly inhabited Arctic Ocean islands. The Inuit language variants of the NWT are often treated together as Inuvialuktun, but this categorisation is misleading as it is a politically motivated grouping of three quite distinct and separate dialects:

Kangiryuarmiutun: spoken mainly in the community of Ulukhaktok. This dialect is essentially identical to the Inuinnaqtun spoken in western Nunavut.

Siglitun: spoken mainly in the communities of Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour and Tuktoyaktuk. Siglitun was once the principal dialect of the Mackenzie River delta and nearby parts of the coast and Arctic islands, but the number of speakers fell dramatically following outbreaks of new diseases in the 19th century and for many years Siglitun was believed to be completely extinct. It was only in the 1980s that outsiders realised that it was still spoken.[2]

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 is not 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.[3] 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 is 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 is 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.

Aivilingmiutut 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.[2]

North Baffin (Qikiqtaaluk uannangani) is spoken on the northern part of Baffin Island, at Iglulik and the adjacent part of the Melville Peninsula, and in Inuit communities in the far north of Nunavut, like Resolute and Grise Fiord. This dialect is the one heard in the film Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner.

South Baffin (Qikiqtaaluk nigiani) is the dialect of the southern part of Baffin Island, including the territorial capital Iqaluit. This has in recent years made it a much more widely heard dialect, since a great deal of Inuktitut media originates in Iqaluit. Some linguists also distinguish an East Baffin dialect from either North or South Baffin.

Nunavik

Quebec is home to roughly 12,000 Inuit, nearly all of whom live in Nunavik. According to the 2001 census, 90% of Quebec Inuit speak Inuktitut.

The Nunavik dialect (Nunavimmiutitut) is relatively close to the South Baffin dialect, but not identical. Because of the political and physical boundary between Nunavik and Nunavut, Nunavik has separate government and educational institutions from those in the rest of the Inuktitut-speaking world, resulting in a growing standardisation of the local dialect as something separate from other forms of Inuktitut. In the Nunavik dialect, Inuktitut is called Inuttitut. This dialect is also sometimes called Tarramiutut or Taqramiutut.

Nunatsiavut

The Nunatsiavut dialect (Nunatsiavummiutut, or often in government documents Labradorimiutut) was once spoken across northern Labrador. It has a distinct writing system, created by German missionaries from the Moravian Church in Greenland in the 1760s. This separate writing tradition, and the remoteness of Nunatsiavut from other Inuit communities, has made it into a distinct dialect with a separate literary tradition. The Nunatsiavummiut call their language Inuttut.

Although Nunatsiavut claims over 4,000 inhabitants of Inuit descent, only 550 reported Inuktitut to be their mother tongue in the 2001 census, mostly in the town of Nain. Inuktitut is seriously endangered in Labrador.

Nunatsiavut also had a separate dialect reputedly much closer to western Inuktitut dialects, spoken in the area around Rigolet. According to news reports, in 1999 it had only three very elderly speakers.[4]

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

Inuktitut consonants in Inuujingajut and IPA notation

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 do not 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 had 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.

In Siberia they use a Cyrillic script.