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My Inuktitut Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4877 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes  Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 1 of 11 21 October 2012 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to my Inuktitut log! Inuktitut is a language spoken in north-eastern Canada, namely Nunavut and
northern Quebec. My fascination with it has stretched for a long time, and stems mostly from an interest with Inuit culture. It is spoken by only 14,000 people so hopefully my decision to learn it will help stem the process of language decline. It's a highly agglutinating language meaning that it chains morphemes together into single words, making it divergent from any of the Indo-European languages I know or have studied. Vocabulary is often my weakest point when learning a language so the fact that Inuktitut takes very few loanwords is not in my favor but makes the experience of learning all the more exciting. My sources for now are quite limited, with the website tusaalanga.ca as my main vocabulary/grammar source. There's also isuma.tv which has a wealth of video sources for much needed auditory input. If anyone has any suggestions for sources, send them this way! The specific dialect I am learning is South Qikiqtaaluk which is spoken on Southern Baffin Island where the territorial capital of Iqaluit is located, and thus much of the media stems from there. So far, I have started a notebook with a glossary of important Inuktitut root words and grammatical rules. Hopefully, if I share some of that here, I can better commit it to memory. The markers for person in a general present tense declarative statement in Inuktitut are: Sing./Dual/Plural 1st person -junga/-jugik/-jugut 2nd person -jutit/-jusik/-jusi 3rd person -juq/-juuk/-jut The “j” (pronounced like the semi-vowel y) is replaced with a “t” when the ending follows a consonant. These endings also always come at the end of a word, no matter how long. The markers for the interrogative form of the present tense are: Sing./Dual/Plural 1st person -vunga/-vinik/-vita 2nd person -vit/-visik/-vis 3rd person -va/-vaak/-vat The “v” is replaced with a “q” if the ending follows the consonant “q” (resulting in doubling of the consonant). If the letter before the ending is any other consonant besides “q”, the consonant is replaced with “p” and so is the “v” in the ending marker, resulting in a double p. The last vowel of each of these endings is often doubled in speech and writing if the question is intended to be a yes/no question. That's it for today, hopefully you found it interesting :). I hope to update this log at least weekly, and I hope to keep that promise! 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 11 21 October 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged |
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Years ago, before the internet, shortwave radio was the window on the world. The CBC had a "Northern Service" broadcasting to the then Northwest Territories and Northern Quebec in Inukitut, English and French. I can remember listening to country music sung in Inukitut on cold winter nights over the radio when I lived on the mainland US. The CBC Northern Service painted a picture of a far away sparsely populated land, but full of life. It still exists: CBC North Programs It will probably take some browsing to find what you want. Good luck. Your log will be interesting.
Edited by iguanamon on 22 October 2012 at 8:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5192 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 11 21 October 2012 at 3:22pm | IP Logged |
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We whine that Japanese or Korean is so hard, but Inuktitut would be the ultimate tough
language for me. And that's not even factoring in the painful lack of resources. On the plus side, I bet they'd be fighting to talk with you on Skype if you are ever looking for a partner. Years ago, I used to have a book and accompanying tape; no idea if it was the same dialect, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4635 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 11 21 October 2012 at 5:15pm | IP Logged |
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Maybe this will interest you:
INTRODUCTORY INUKTITUT REFERENCE GRAMMAR Version 2.1 Written by Mick Mallon Revised by Alexina Kublu Publisher: Nunavut Arctic College; 1995 Ittukuluuk Language Programs Iqaluit & Victoria http://ontario.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-books-INTRODUCTORY-I NUKTITUT-REFERENCE-GRAMMAR- W0QQAdIdZ357275826 There are also many books by Alexina Kublu and Mick Mallon with drills, etc. Check your local libraries, especially college libraries (mine has many such books). Bibliography on Eskimo-Aleut Languages and Linguistics http://ling.kgw.tu-berlin.de/polysynthese/Eskimo-Aleut_Bibli ography.pdf Inuktitut Morphological Analyser http://www.inuktitutcomputing.ca/Uqailaut/en/IMA.html English-Inuktitut dictionary http://books.google.ca/books? id=54YRNOG1ms8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inuktitut&source=bl&o ts=z7HTAWlgoZ&sig=TpHSh_yEXumMQny_ kjuZ1n39M8E&hl=pl&sa=X&ei=cQ-EUKuoAcviyAHqkYHIDA&ved=0CDEQ6A EwAQ Another dictionary (seems better than the first) http://books.google.ca/books? id=eD5M1_kk_I0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inuktitut&source=bl&o ts=2E5P90kan0&sig=WC_iS3T_ZgzSit__5Knty 7auWyk&hl=pl&sa=X&ei=pQ-EUIXmIM3ryAH9kIDYBQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBA An online french-inuktitut dictionary: http://polaires.free.fr/Dictionnaire/ A basic conversational eskimo (yuk) KOO, J.H. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL? bi=1313123432&searchurl=tn%3Dbasic%2Bconversational%2Beskimo %2Byuk Also, what they say is the only native inuktitut dictionary: Taamusi Qumaq, Inuit Uqausillaringit, Kupaimmi : Inuksiutikkunullu Avatakkunullu Nuitartitait, 1991 (Québec : Impression GSM) http://publicationsnunavik.com/fr/bo ok/inu it-uqausillaringit -2/ (without the space before the -) also from the same publisher: CD Ulirnaisigutiit – An Inuktitut-English-French Dictionnary of Northern Quebec, Labrador and Eastern Arctic Dialects http://publicationsnunavik.com/other/cd-ulirnaisigutiit-an-i nuktitut-english-french-dictionnary-of-northern- quebec-labrador-and-eastern-arctic-dialects/ An interesting website : ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ – Inuktitut Syllabarium http://www.languagegeek.com/inu/inu_syllabarium.html A "Nunavik Syllabic" application to write on the computer: http://www.kativik.qc.ca/fr/installateur-nunavik-syllabics Edited by Homogenik on 21 October 2012 at 6:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6967 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 11 21 October 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
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I found this list of publications from Piruvik Press as well as this list of textbooks and courses for sale at Nunavut Arctic College.
Mick Mallon helped create a lot of the books used at the college and it may be worth trying to contact him for more information or leads. In any case, ask the college to see if it'd sell copies of those books to you. I haven't been able to find any contact information for Mallon but you could try to contact Alexina Kublu who is at the Office of the Languages Commissioner. She was a co-author of some of those textbooks before becoming the Languages Commissioner. On Google I've come across some classes for Inuktitut at a few Canadian universities (e.g. Queen's University, University of Toronto. McGill University) but I'm not sure if you'll have the time to attend. Perhaps contacting the instructors may still be useful if they can pass on tips. There're also sketches on the language and its grammar and phonology from Wikipedia. In addition there're sites with some online tools (e.g. morphological analyzer) and an online dictionary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5767 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 6 of 11 21 October 2012 at 6:56pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck with this Kartof, it looks like a really interesting language. Are you planning on learning the syllabary or instead learning through the English character equivalents? The syllabary is too cool to pass up on and looks really logical.
You are likely aware that Inuktituk has official language status in some of the northern parts of Canada and legislative and, increasingly, business use up in some of those parts. There is a certain amount of federal and territorial government support for and promotion of the language use. With the likely increasing importance of the north in terms of resources in the coming decades, it may be interesting to see whether this becomes a language of wider interest than is currently the case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eebeejay Newbie Canada Joined 4291 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, French | Message 7 of 11 21 October 2012 at 9:59pm | IP Logged |
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Best of luck!
I don't know if you're aware of it but Izuma TV has the Atanarjuat trilogy online for free, as well as some other free films in Inuktitut. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4635 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 8 of 11 22 October 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
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What's a shame is that this language isn't even taught anymore in Quebec universities, while France has a whole
program of licence and master degrees. The language and its communities should have prime representation in the province and the language should feature more prominently. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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