Distribution ofInuit languages across theArctic. East Inuktitut dialects are those coloured dark blue (on the south ofBaffin Island), red, pink, and brown.
It is recognized as an official language in Nunavut alongsideInuinnaqtun and both languages are known collectively asInuktut. Further, it is recognized as one of eight official native tongues in the Northwest Territories.[5] It also haslegal recognition inNunavik—a part of Quebec—thanks in part to theJames Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, and is recognized in theCharter of the French Language as the official language of instruction for Inuit school districts there. It also has some recognition inNunatsiavut—theInuit area inLabrador—following the ratification of its agreement with thegovernment of Canada and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The2016 Canadian census reports that 70,540 individuals identify themselves as Inuit, of whom 37,570 self-reported Inuktitut as their mother tongue.[1][6]
The termInuktitut is also the name of amacrolanguage and, in that context, also includesInuvialuktun, and thus nearly all Inuit dialects of Canada.[7] However,Statistics Canada lists all Inuit languages in the Canadian census as Inuktut.[6]
Before contact with Europeans, Inuit learned skills by example and participation. The Inuktitut language provided them with all the vocabulary required to describe traditional practices and natural features.[8] Up to this point, it was solely anoral language. However,European colonialism brought the schooling system to Canada. The missionaries of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches were the first ones to deliver formal education to Inuit in schools. The teachers used the Inuktitut language for instruction and developed writing systems.[9]
In 1928 the firstresidential school for Inuit opened, and English became the language of instruction. As the government's interests in the north increased, it started taking over the education of Inuit. After the end of World War II, English was seen as the language of communication in all domains. Officials expressed concerns about the difficulty for Inuit to find employment if they were not able to communicate in English. Inuit were supposed to use English at school, work, and even on the playground.[10] Inuit themselves viewed Inuktitut as the way to express their feelings and be linked to their identity, while English was a tool for making money.[8]
In the 1960s, the European attitude towards the Inuktitut language started to change. Inuktitut was seen as a language worth preserving, and it was argued that knowledge, particularly in the first years of school, is best transmitted in the mother tongue. This set off the beginning of bilingual schools. In 1969, most Inuit voted to eliminate federal schools and replace them with programs by theGeneral Directorate of New Quebec [fr] (Direction générale du Nouveau-Québec, DGNQ). Content was now taught in Inuktitut, English, and French.[10]
Inuktitut became one of the official languages in the Northwest Territories in 1984. Its status is secured in theNorthwest Territories Official Language Act. With the split of the territory into the NWT and Nunavut in 1999, both territories kept the Language Act.[5] The autonomous areaNunatsiavut in Labrador made Inuktitut the government language when it was formed in 2005. In Nunavik, theJames Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement recognizes Inuktitut in the education system.[11]
Nunavut's basic law lists four official languages: English, French, Inuktitut, andInuinnaqtun. It is ambiguous in state policy to what degree Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun can be thought of as separate languages. The wordsInuktitut, or more correctlyInuktut ('Inuit language') are increasingly used to refer to both Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut together, or "Inuit languages" in English.[12]
Nunavut is the home of some 24,000 Inuit, over 80% of whom speak Inuktitut. This includes some 3,500 people reported as monolinguals. The 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.
The South Baffin dialect (Qikiqtaaluk nigiani,ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ ᓂᒋᐊᓂ) is spoken across the southern part ofBaffin Island, including the territorial capitalIqaluit. This has in recent years made it a much more widely heard dialect, since a great deal of Inuktitut media originates inIqaluit. Some linguists also distinguish anEast Baffin dialect from either South Baffin orNorth Baffin dialect, which is an Inuvialuktun dialect.
As of the early 2000s, Nunavut has gradually implemented early childhood, elementary, and secondary school-level immersion programs within its education system to further preserve and promote the Inuktitut language. As of 2012[update], "Pirurvik,Iqaluit's Inuktitut language training centre, has a new goal: to train instructors from Nunavut communities to teach Inuktitut in different ways and in their own dialects when they return home."[13]
Quebec is home to roughly 15,800 Inuit, nearly all of whom live inNunavik. According to the 2021 census, 80.9% of Quebec Inuit speak Inuktitut.[14]
The Nunavik dialect (Nunavimmiutitut,ᓄᓇᕕᒻᒥᐅᑎᑐᑦ) 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 standardization of the local dialect as something separate from other forms of Inuktitut. In the Nunavik dialect, Inuktitut is calledNunavimmiutut (ᐃᓄᑦᑎᑐᑦ). This dialect is also sometimes calledTarramiutut orTaqramiutut (ᑕᕐᕋᒥᐅᑐᑦ orᑕᖅᕐᕋᒥᐅᑐᑦ).
Sub dialects of Inuktitut in this region include Tarrarmiut and Itivimuit.[15] Itivimuit is associated withInukjuak, Quebec, and there is anItivimuit River near the town.
TheNunatsiavut dialect (Inuttitutᓄᓇᑦᓯᐊᕗᒻᒥᐅᑐᑦ or, often in government documents,Labradorimiutut) was once spoken across northernLabrador. It has a distinct writing system, developed in Greenland in the 1760s by German missionaries from theMoravian Church. This separate writing tradition, the remoteness of Nunatsiavut from other Inuit communities, has made it into a distinct dialect with a separate literary tradition. The Nunatsiavummiut call their languageInuttut (ᐃᓄᑦᑐᑦ).
Although Nunatsiavut claims over 4,000 inhabitants of Inuit descent, only 550 reported Inuktitut to be their native language in the 2001 census, mostly in the town ofNain. Inuktitut is seriously endangered in Labrador.
Nunatsiavut also had a separate dialect reputedly much closer to western Inuktitut dialects, spoken in the area aroundRigolet. According to news reports, in 1999 it had only three very elderly speakers.[16]
Though often thought to be a dialect ofGreenlandic,Inuktun or Polar Eskimo is a recent arrival in Greenland from the Eastern Canadian Arctic, arriving perhaps as late as the 18th century.
^The voiced palatal stop is absent from many dialects and is not written with a separate letter. If a distinction needs to be made between /j/ and /ɟ/, it is written as r̂.
^In theSiglitun dialect, k is always pronounced as a fricative /x/. In other dialects, the fricative realization is possible between vowels or vowels andapproximants.
^In theSiglitun dialect, g is always pronounced as a fricative /ɣ/. In other dialects, the fricative realization is possible between vowels or vowels and approximants.
All voiceless stops are unaspirated, like in many other languages. The voiceless uvular stop is usually written as q, but sometimes written as r. The voiceless lateral fricative isromanized as ɬ, but is often written as &, or simply as l.
/ŋ/ is spelt as ng, and geminated /ŋ/ is spelt as nng.
Inuktitut, like otherEskaleut languages, has a very richmorphological system, in which a succession of differentmorphemes are added to root words to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also:Agglutinative language andPolysynthetic 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. Inuktitut's morphological system is highly regular.
One example is the wordqangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga (ᖃᖓᑕᓲᒃᑯᕕᒻᒨᕆᐊᖃᓛᖅᑐᖓ) meaning 'I'll have to go to the airport:[22]
The western part of Nunavut and theNorthwest Territories use a Latin alphabet usually calledInuinnaqtun orQaliujaaqpait, reflecting the predispositions of the missionaries who reached this area in the late 19th century and early 20th.
Moravian missionaries, with the purpose of introducing Inuit toChristianity and theBible, contributed to the development of an Inuktitut alphabet inGreenland during the 1760s that was based on the Latin script. (This alphabet is distinguished by its inclusion of the letterkra, ĸ.) They later travelled to Labrador in the 1800s, bringing the Inuktitut alphabet with them.
In the 1860s, missionaries imported this system ofQaniujaaqpait, which they had developed in their efforts to convert theCree toChristianity, to the Eastern Canadian Inuit. TheNetsilik Inuit inKugaaruk and northBaffin Island adoptedQaniujaaqpait by the 1920s.
In September 2019, a unified orthography called Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait, based on the Latin alphabet without diacritics, was adopted for all varieties of Inuktitut by the national organizationInuit Tapiriit Kanatami, after eight years of work. It was developed by Inuit to be used by speakers of any dialect from any region, and can be typed on electronic devices without specialized keyboard layouts. It does not replace syllabics, and people from the regions are not required to stop using their familiar writing systems. Implementation plans are to be established for each region. It includes letters such asff,ch, andrh, the sounds for which exist in some dialects but do not have standard equivalents in syllabics. It establishes a standard alphabet but not spelling or grammar rules.[23][24] Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel (e.g.,aa,ii,uu). The apostrophe represents aglottal stop when after a vowel (e.g.,maꞌna), or separates ann from anng (e.g.,avin'ngaq) or anr from anrh (e.g.,qar'rhuk).[25]
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.
In April 2012, with the completion of theOld Testament, the first complete Bible in Inuktitut, translated by native speakers, was published.[26]
The Inuktitut syllabary used in Canada is based on theCree syllabary devised by the missionaryJames Evans.[29] The present form of the syllabary for Canadian Inuktitut was adopted by theInuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s. Inuit in Alaska,Inuvialuit, Inuinnaqtun speakers, and Inuit inGreenland andLabrador use Latin alphabets.
Though conventionally called asyllabary, the writing system has been classified by some observers as anabugida, since syllables starting with the same consonant have relatedglyphs rather than unrelated ones.
In 2012 Tamara Kearney, Manager of Braille Research and Development at the Commonwealth Braille and Talking Book Cooperative, developed a Braille code for the Inuktitut language syllabics. This code is based on representing the syllabics' orientation. Machine translation from UnicodeUTF-8 andUTF-16 can be performed using the Liblouis Braille translation system[35] which includes anInuktitut Braille translation table. The bookᐃᓕᐊᕐᔪᒃ ᓇᓄᕐᓗ (The Orphan and the Polar Bear) became the first work ever translated into Inuktitut Braille, and a copy is held at the headquarters of theNunavut Public Library Services atBaker Lake.
^abDorais, Louis-Jacques (2010).The language of the Inuit: syntax, semantics, and society in the Arctic. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.ISBN9780773544451.OCLC767733303.
Spalding, Alex (1992).Inuktitut: a Grammar of North Baffin Dialects. Wuerz.ISBN0-920063-43-8.
"The Inuktitut Language".Project Naming | the identification of Inuit portrayed in photographic collections at Library and Archives Canada. Collectionscanada.ca.Archived from the original on 23 January 2018.
Although as many of the examples as possible are novel or extracted from Inuktitut texts, some of the examples in this article are drawn fromIntroductory Inuktitut andInuktitut Linguistics for Technocrats.
Allen, Shanley.Aspects of Argument Structure Acquisition in Inuktitut. Language acquisition & language disorders, v. 13. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub, 1996.ISBN1-55619-776-4
Fortescue, Michael, Steven Jacobson, and Lawrence Kaplan.Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates – second edition. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2011.ISBN1555001092.
Kalmar, Ivan.Case and Context in Inuktitut (Eskimo). Mercury series. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1979.
Nowak, Elke.Transforming the Images Ergativity and Transitivity in Inuktitut (Eskimo). Empirical approaches to language typology, 15. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996.ISBN3-11-014980-X
Schneider, Lucien.Ulirnaisigutiit An Inuktitut–English Dictionary of Northern Québec, Labrador, and Eastern Arctic Dialects (with an English-Inuktitut Index). Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1985.
Spalding, Alex, and Thomas Kusugaq.Inuktitut A Multi-Dialectal Outline Dictionary (with an Aivilingmiutaq Base). Iqaluit, NT: Nunavut Arctic College, 1998.ISBN1-896204-29-5
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