Inuktitut Language Varieties Linguistics Phonology

Specifically, Inuktitut is the dialect of the Inuit of the Canadian Eastern Arctic. It is also used to refer to the Inuit language as a whole, which is more in the nature of a dialect continuum than a single language; this continuum can be divided into roughly sixteen varieties, in four groups:

All Inuktitut varieties taken together have a speaking population of approximately 80,000.

Broadly, Inuktitut proper can be divided into three main dialect groups, and various subgroups:

Keewatin - Spoken on the west coast of Hudson Bay.
Baffin - Spoken on the Islands to the north of Hudson Bay, most notably, as the name suggests, on Baffin Island.
Nunavik/Labrador - Spoken to the east of Hudson Bay, as the name suggests, in Nunavik(Northern Quebec) and Labrador.

Keewatin tends to be more conservative, preserving most consonant clusters, whereas the Nunavik dialects tend to be more radical, with the tendency to turn consonant clusters into geminates (Using the name of the language as an example - Keewatin Inuktitut is Nunavik Inuttitut). South Baffin dialects tend to be radical in this way, North Baffin ones more conservative.

2 Linguistics

It is related to the AleutThe Aleuts (self-denomination: Unangan are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The homeland of the Aleuts includes the Aleutian Islands, the Pribilof Islands, the Shumagin Islands, and the far western part of the Alaska Peninsula. language, and together they form the Eskimo-Aleut family; while this has no proven wider affinities, some postulation has taken place as to the relation of Inuktitut to the Indo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages include some 443 ( SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. Contemporary language and to the Nostratic superphylum.

Inuktitut, like other Eskimo-Aleut languages, represents a particular type of agglutinative languageAn agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view. It was derived from the Latin verb aggl called a polysynthetic languagePolysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic. Polysynthetic l: it "synthesizes" a root and various grammatical affixes to create long words with sentence-like meanings.

An interesting thing is naming of individuals. Some names include 'Ujaraq' (rock), 'Nuvuk' (headland), 'Nasak' (hat, or hood), 'Tupiq' (tent), 'Qajaq' ( kayak), etc. There is also names that share names in the animal world: 'Nanuq' (polar-bear), 'Uqalik' (Arctic hare), 'Tiriaq' (ermine), etc. A third class are individual with anatomic reference but are not descriptive of the person named, obviously, in that the names are derived from a long succession of people bearing that same soul. Examples include 'Itigaituk' (has no feet), 'Usuiituk' (has no penis), 'Tulimak' (rib), etc.

2.1 Phonology

Inuktitut has 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 stop s, voiced continuant s and nasals, as well as two additional sounds - voiceless fricative s.

This leaves us with the following consonants:

p, t ,k - As in English, though not aspirated .
q - As in Arabic. Similar to English k, but further back in the mouth. Sometimes a fricative.
v, l - As in English.
j - As in German. As English, y, when used as a consonant.
g - As in Spanish, between vowels. Similar to English g, but allowing some air to escape (a fricative).
r - As in French. Similar to g above, but further back in the mouth. Also, before nasals, similar to ng, but further back.
m, n - As in English.
ng - As in English sing.
s - As in English.
l - As Welsh ll. Similar to English l, but allowing air to escape. Spelt kl below.

And the vowels:

a - As in Spanish. Similar to the vowel in English cat, but more open.
i - As in Spanish. A short version of English ee.
u - As in Spanish. A short version of English oo.
aa, ii, uu - Longer versions of the above.

2.2 The Canadian Syllabary

The Inuktitut syllabary used in Canada is based on the Cree syllabary, which is in turn based on that of Ojibwe. Both of these were created by missionary James Evans. The syllabary for Canadian Inuktitut was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s. The Inupiaq in Alaska and Greenland use a Roman script and Inuit in Siberia use Cyrillic letters.

Though conventionally called a syllabary, the writing system is, strictly speaking, 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.

3 Legal status

Inuktitut is an official language in the following areas:

Greenland (Greenlandic, with Danish)
Nunavut, Canada (Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, with English and French)
Northwest Territories, Canada (Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, and Inuvialuktun, with Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich'in, Slavey, and Tli Cho).

Also, according to the Charter of the French Language in Quebec, Canada, Inuktitut is the official language of instruction for Inuit school districts in Nunavik (northern Quebec).

5 External links

Abugida writing systems Inuit Languages Languages of Canada Languages of Russia Polysynthetic languages Uvular R

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1 Varieties