Greenlandic language

Inuktitut (lit. 'Like the Inuit') is the language of the Inuit people. The language is a member of the Eskimo-Aleut group of languages.

Varieties

It 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:

• Iñupiaq (northern Alaska)
• Inuinnaqtun (Canadian Western Arctic)
• Inuktitut proper (Canadian Eastern Arctic)
• Kalaallisut or Greenlandic (Greenland).

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

Linguistics

It is related to the Aleut 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 languages and to the Nostratic superphylum.

Inuktitut, like other Eskimo-Aleut languages, represents a particular type of agglutinative language called a polysynthetic language: 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: 'Nanoq' (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.

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.

See also: Yupik language, Inupik. Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

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).