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Inuktitut ( ; , syllabics ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ), also known as Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the North American tree line, including parts of the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, to some extent in northeastern Manitoba as well as the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It is one of the aboriginal languages written with Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.
It is recognized as an official language in Nunavut alongside Inuinnaqtun and both languages are known collectively as Inuktut. Further, it is recognized as one of eight official native tongues in 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 recognized in the Charter of the French Language as the official language of instruction for Inuit school districts there. It also has some recognition in NunatuKavut and 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 2016 Canadian census reports that 70,540 individuals identify themselves as Inuit, of whom 37,570 self-reported Inuktitut as their mother tongue.
The term Inuktitut is also the name of a macrolanguage and, in that context, also includes Inuvialuktun, and thus nearly all Inuit dialects of Canada. However, Statistics Canada lists all Inuit languages in the Canadian census as Inuktut.
In 1928 the first residential 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. 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.
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 the (Direction générale du Nouveau-Québec, DGNQ). Content was now taught in Inuktitut, English, and French.
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 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 South Baffin or North 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. , "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."
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 called Nunavimmiutut (ᐃᓄᑦᑎᑐᑦ). This dialect is also sometimes called Tarramiutut or Taqramiutut (ᑕᕐᕋᒥᐅᑐᑦ or ᑕᖅᕐᕋᒥᐅᑐᑦ).
Sub dialects of Inuktitut in this region include Tarrarmiut and Itivimuit. Itivimuit is associated with Inukjuak, Quebec, and there is an Itivimuit River near the town.
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 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.
It is used by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and the Government of Nunavut throughout Inuit Nunaat and Inuit Nunangat.
| + Inuktitut vowels ! !! !! IPA !! Inuujingajut !! Notes | |
| Long | |
| Long | |
| Long |
| + Inuktitut consonants in Inuujingajut and IPA notation ! colspan="2" | Labial consonant!! Coronal!! Palatal!! colspan="2" >Velar consonant!! Uvular consonant !!Glottal |
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 is Romanization as ɬ, but is often written as &, or simply as l.
/ŋ/ is spelt as ng, and geminated /ŋ/ is spelt as nng.
One example is the word qangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga (ᖃᖓᑕᓲᒃᑯᕕᒻᒨᕆᐊᖃᓛᖅᑐᖓ) meaning 'I'll have to go to the airport:
| -q is deleted |
| -t is deleted |
| -k changes to -m |
| -t+a changes to -u |
| -q+ja is deleted |
| -q is deleted |
| -q is deleted |
| -q+j changes to -q+t |
missionaries, with the purpose of introducing Inuit to Christianity and the Bible, contributed to the development of an Inuktitut alphabet in Greenland during the 1760s that was based on the Latin script. (This alphabet is distinguished by its inclusion of the letter kra, ĸ.) They later travelled to Labrador in the 1800s, bringing the Inuktitut alphabet with them.
The Alaskan Yupik peoples and Inupiat people (who additionally developed yugtun script) and the Siberian Yupik also adopted Latin alphabets.
In the 1860s, missionaries imported this system of Qaniujaaqpait, which they had developed in their efforts to convert the Cree to Christianity, to the Eastern Canadian Inuit. The Netsilik in Kugaaruk and north Baffin Island adopted Qaniujaaqpait 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 organization Inuit 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 as ff, ch, and rh, 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. Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel (e.g., aa, ii, uu). The apostrophe represents a glottal stop when after a vowel (e.g., mana), or separates an n from an ng (e.g., avin'ngaq) or an r from an rh (e.g., qar'rhuk).
| +Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait !IPA !Consonant !a !i !u | ||||
| p | p | pa | pi | pu |
| t | t | ta | ti | tu |
| k | k | ka | ki | ku |
| q | q | qa | qi | qu |
| s | s | sa | si | su |
| ɬ | hl | hla | hli | hlu |
| ʂ | shr | shra | shri | shru |
| h | h | ha | hi | hu |
| v | v | va | vi | vu |
| l | l | la | li | lu |
| ɟ | rh | rha | rhi | rhu |
| j | j | ja | ji | ju |
| g | g | ga | gi | gu |
| ʁ | r | ra | ri | ru |
| m | m | ma | mi | mu |
| n | n | na | ni | nu |
| ŋ | ng | nga | ngi | ngu |
| ŋŋ | nng | nnga | nngi | nngu |
| Glottal stop | a | i | u |
Noted literature in Inuktitut has included the novels Harpoon of the Hunter by Markoosie Patsauq, "MARKOOSIE, 1942-: LMS-0017" . Collections Canada. and italic=yes by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk.
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 rather than unrelated ones.
All of the characters needed for the Inuktitut syllabary are available in the Unicode block Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. The territorial government of Nunavut, Canada, has developed TrueType typeface called Pigiarniq Tiro Typeworks: Syllabics Resources Pigiarniq Font Download (ᐱᒋᐊᕐᓂᖅ ), Uqammaq Uqammaq Font Download (ᐅᖃᒻᒪᖅ ), and Euphemia Euphemia Font Download (ᐅᕓᒥᐊ ) for computer displays. They were designed by Vancouver-based Tiro Typeworks. Apple Macintosh computers include an Inuktitut IME (Input Method Editor) as part of keyboard language options. Linux distributions provide locale and language support for Iñupiaq, Kalaallisut and Inuktitut.
Although as many of the examples as possible are novel or extracted from Inuktitut texts, some of the examples in this article are drawn from Introductory Inuktitut and Inuktitut Linguistics for Technocrats.
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