Inuktun ( en, Polar Inuit, kl, avanersuarmiutut, da, nordgrønlandsk, polarinuitisk, thulesproget) is the language of approximately 1,000 indigenous

Inughuit The Inughuit (also spelled Inuhuit), or the Smith Sound Inuit, historically Arctic Highlanders, are Greenlandic Inuit. Formerly known as "Polar Eskimos", they are the northernmost group of Inuit and the northernmost people in North America, livin ...

(Polar

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

), inhabiting the world's northernmost settlements in

Qaanaaq Qaanaaq (), formerly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost cities and towns, northernmost towns in the world. The inhabitants of ...

and the surrounding villages in northwestern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

Geographic distribution

Apart from the town of Qaanaaq, Inuktun is also spoken in the villages of (Inuktun names in brackets) Moriusaq (Muriuhaq),

Siorapaluk Siorapaluk (West Greenlandic) or Hiurapaluk ( Polar Inuit) is a settlement in the Qaanaaq area of the Avannaata municipality in northern Greenland. It is one of the world's northernmost inhabited settlements, the northernmost settlement inhabite ...

(Hiurapaluk),

Qeqertat Qeqertat is a small village in the Qaanaaq area of the Avannaata municipality, in northern Greenland. It is located on the Harvard islands, in the inner Inglefield Fjord Inglefield Gulf or Inglefield Fjord ( da, Inglefield Bredning; kl, Kange ...

(Qikiqtat),

Qeqertarsuaq Qeqertarsuaq () is a port and town in Qeqertalik municipality, located on the south coast of Disko Island on the west coast of Greenland. Founded in 1773, the town is now home to a campus of the University of Copenhagen known as Arctic Station. ...

(Qikiqtarhuaq), and

Savissivik Savissivik (West Greenlandic; old spelling: ''Savigsivik'') or Havighivik ( Inuktun) is a settlement in the Avannaata municipality in northern Greenland. Located on Meteorite Island, off the northern shores of Melville Bay, the settlement had 5 ...

(Havighivik).

Classification

The language is an

Eskimo–Aleut language The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

and dialectologically it is in between the

Greenlandic language Greenlandic ( kl, kalaallisut, link=no ; da, grønlandsk ) is an Eskimo–Aleut language with about 56,000 speakers, mostly Greenlandic Inuit in Greenland. It is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada such as Inuktitut. It is the mos ...

(Kalaallisut) and the Canadian

Inuktitut Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...

Inuvialuktun Inuvialuktun (part of ''Western Canadian Inuit/Inuktitut/Inuktut/Inuktun'') comprises several Inuit language varieties spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by Canadian Inuit who call themselves ''Inuvialuit''. Some dialects and sub-dialec ...

Inuinnaqtun Inuinnaqtun (; natively meaning ''like the real human beings/peoples''), is an indigenous Inuit language. It is spoken in the central Canadian Arctic. It is related very closely to Inuktitut, and some scholars, such as Richard Condon, believe th ...

. The language differs from Kalaallisut by some phonological, grammatical and lexical differences.

History

The Polar Inuit were the last to cross from Canada into Greenland and they may have arrived as late as in the 18th century.Fortescue 1991. page 1 The language was first described by the explorers

Knud Rasmussen Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (; 7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" (now often known as Inuit Studies or Greenlandic and Arctic Studies ...

and Peter Freuchen who travelled through northern Greenland in the early 20th century and established a trading post in 1910 at Dundas (Uummannaq) near

Pituffik Pituffik is a former settlement in northern Greenland, located at the eastern end of Bylot Sound by a tombolo known as ''Uummannaq'', near the current site of the American Thule Air Base. The former inhabitants were relocated to the present-day to ...

Current situation

Inuktun does not have its own

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

and is not taught in schools. However, most of the inhabitants of Qaanaaq and the surrounding villages use Inuktun in their everyday communication. All speakers of Inuktun also speak Standard Greenlandic and many also speak Danish and a few also English.

Phonology and orthography

There is no official way to transcribe Inuktun. This article uses the orthography of

Michael Fortescue Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946) is a British-born linguistics, linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Greenlandic language, Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi language, Chukchi and Nitinaht languag ...

, which deliberately reflects the close connection between Inuktun and

Vowels

The vowels are the same as in other Inuit dialects: /i/, /u/ and /a/ There are two diphthongs: /ai/ and /au/, which have been assimilated in West Greenlandic to /aa/ (except for final /ai/)

Consonants

The most notable phonological difference from West Greenlandic is the

debuccalization Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspira ...

of West Greenlandic /s/ to /h/ (often pronounced � except for geminate ː(from earlier /ss/ or /vs/). Inuktun also allows more consonant clusters than Kalaallisut, namely ones with initial /k/, /ŋ/, /ɣ/, /q/ or /ʁ/. Older or conservative speakers also still have clusters with initial /p/, /m/ or /v/. Younger speakers have gone further in reducing old clusters, with also /k/, /ŋ/ and /ɣ/ being assimilated to the following consonant. The digraphs and (from earlier /ɣs/ and /ʁs/, cognates with West Greenlandic and ) are pronounced like West Greenlandic velar and uvular fricatives -gg- /xː/ and -rr- /χː/ respectively.

Comparison with West Greenlandic

Notes

References

* Fortescue, Michael, 1991, Inuktun: an introduction to the language of Qaanaaq, Thule, Institut for Eskimologi 15, Københavns Universitet

External links

* Pax Leonard, Stephen.
Scientist lives with Arctic Innuguit for a year to document and help save disappearing language
"

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Inuktun Language Greenlandic language Endangered Eskaleut languages Inuit languages Inughuit Languages of Greenland Agglutinative languages Indigenous languages of the North American Arctic