Inuktitut Language Guide

Official language in
Canada
Script
Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Latin
Speakers
38K (2021)

Where it's spoken

The Official Languages Act of Nunavut recognizes Inuktut (Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun), English and French as the official languages within the territory. This is a status of the territory of Nunavut: the Office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut describes Nunavut as the only jurisdiction in Canada where an Indigenous language has equal official status with English and French. Under section 3 of the Inuktut Protection Act, organizations operating in Nunavut, including private-sector organizations and federal institutions, must ensure that Inuktut is available in public signage (including emergency and exit signs), in reception, customer and client services, and in essential and particular services such as health, food and hospitality.

Inuktitut is the most widely spoken Inuktut language in Nunavut, and it is dominant in the Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) and Kivalliq regions. Inuinnaqtun is spoken mainly in the Kitikmeot region, particularly in Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay. In the Northwest Territories, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun are among the territory's 11 official languages.

Tusaalanga, an Inuktut learning site developed in collaboration with the Government of Nunavut, describes the Inuit language as a whole, spoken from Alaska to Greenland, as a spectrum of dialects that vary enormously from one end of the Arctic to the other, and says that communities close to one another generally have few problems communicating between dialects. This app follows the South Baffin form, the speech of Iqaluit, which Tusaalanga groups with Kimmirut, Kinngait, Panniqtuuq and Qikiqtarjuaq as South Qikiqtaaluk. Two everyday words differ from North Qikiqtaaluk: "no" is aagga in the south and aakka in the north, and "thank you" is nakurmiik in the south and qujannamiik in the north. The app's card for Na-kur-miik notes that qujannamiik is also widely used.

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Script & pronunciation

Syllabics is the predominant writing system everywhere in Nunavut except the Inuinnaqtun-speaking communities, which use roman letters only, and it is also predominant in Nunavik; roman letters are often used as well. Syllabics were originally developed for the Ojibwe and Cree languages and were adapted to the sounds of Inuktut. The standard in Nunavut is the ICI orthography, which has a syllabic form (qaniujaaqpait) and a roman form (qaliujaaqpait) that mirror each other.

Most syllabic characters stand for a consonant followed by a vowel: each consonant has its own character shape, which is rotated or reversed to give the three vowels i, u and a. A long vowel is marked in syllabics by a dot above the character and in roman letters by a doubled vowel, so in this app ᐄ is written Ii and is a different character from short ᐃ (i). A consonant that is not followed by a vowel is written with a small raised character called a final. The sound ng counts as a single consonant, and when it is doubled it is written nng, as in ᑐᙵᓱᒋᑦ (Tu-nnga-su-git, "Welcome"). A long vowel or a doubled consonant is held twice as long as a single one.

In the roman spelling, the letter j is pronounced like the English y in "yak". The letter r is a sound made at the back of the throat, similar to the French r, and q is another sound produced at the back of the throat.

The romanization on this app's cards is the app's own syllable-by-syllable transliteration of the syllabics: syllables are separated by hyphens, and a final consonant stays with the syllable before it, as in ᓇᑯᕐᒦᒃ, Na-kur-miik ("Thank you"). It differs from the official roman spelling in how it writes q followed by k. The official roman orthography writes the syllabic sequences ᖅᑭ, ᖅᑯ and ᖅᑲ as qqi, qqu and qqa, whereas the cards write the q and the k as separate syllables: ᖃᑦᓯᒨᖅᑲ is Qat-si-muuq-ka? ("What time is it?"), while the card's grammar note uses qatsimuuqqat?, with qq, for the related question about a future time.

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Grammar essentials

Inuktut words are built from a root, optional affixes and a grammatical ending, so that one long word can say what takes a whole sentence in English. A verb ending tells who is acting. The ending -junga means "I" (it becomes -tunga after a root that ends in a consonant), -jutit means "you" for one person, and -juq means "he", "she" or "it". For example, Tu-ki-si-ju-nga means "I understand". Because the ending shows the subject, separate pronouns are often not needed. There are separate endings for one person, for two people and for three or more.

Questions are made with question endings used in place of the ordinary verb endings: -vit asks about "you" and -va asks about "he", "she" or "it". Tu-ki-si-vit? means "Do you understand?" and U-na su-na-u-va? means "What is this?". After a root that ends in q, the v of these endings becomes q.

The negative is made by placing the affix -nngit- just before the ending, which is why Tu-ki-si-nngit-tu-nga means "I don't understand" while Tu-ki-si-ju-nga means "I understand". To say "want", the affix -juma- is placed before the ending; it becomes -ruma- after a root ending in q and -guma- after a root ending in k. This gives the pattern of Kaa-pi-tu-ru-ma-ju-nga ("I'd like coffee.").

The affix -vik makes from a verb a word for a time or a place where the action happens; for example, the verb "to eat" gives a word for a dining room. The card word A-nar-vik ("washroom") ends in -vik, as in A-nar-vik na-miip-pa? ("Where is the washroom?").

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Politeness & etiquette

Among the simplest pronouns that Tusaalanga's lesson on pronouns lists, "you" is given by number only, for one person, for two people and for three or more, and no separate polite form is listed.

According to the cards, greetings change with the time of day. The cards give Ul-laak-kut ("Good morning"), Un-nu-sak-kut ("Good afternoon") and Un-nuk-kut ("Good evening", not a bedtime "good night"), as well as Ul-luk-kut ("Good day") as the everyday daytime greeting. In a Tusaalanga dialogue two speakers greet each other with Unnusakkut, translated "Good afternoon".

A guest is welcomed with Tu-nnga-su-git ("Welcome"), the form for one person; the card gives tunngasugitsik for two people and tunngasugitsi for three or more. In Tusaalanga's first dialogue the reply is tunngasuppunga, literally "I feel welcome".

To ask how someone is, the cards give Qa-nu-ip-pit? ("How are you?") for one person, and the answer is Qa-nu-i-nngit-tu-nga ("I'm fine."). Tusaalanga gives qanuippisik for two people and qanuippisi for three or more. To ask whether someone speaks the language, the cards give I-nuk-ti-tuu-suu-ngu-vit? ("Do you speak Inuktitut?"); the same Tusaalanga dialogue answers "Yes, a little bit", and the card I-nuk-ti-tuu-suu-ngu-ju-nga mi-ki-ju-mik means "I speak a little Inuktitut."

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