Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Apr 12/99) - Just back from spending the weekend in Iglulik and celebrating the official birth of Nunavut with her family and friends, Alexina Kublu took a few moments to talk about her expertise in teaching Inuktitut, both in the North and around the world.

News/North: How long have you been teaching Inuktitut?

Alexina Kublu: One year when we were teaching Inuktitut, I said when we reach 25 years of teaching Inuktitut as a second language, I am going to consider myself an expert. I became an expert last year. I think I can call myself an expert.

News/North: Many people consider you to be very highly regarded in your abilities to teach the language. Has it taken you 25 years to build that reputation?

Kublu I think so. I've worked largely with Mick (Mallon), but then I've also worked on my own and he's done stuff on his own.

News/North: How did you get into this field?

Kublu I think the first step was when I lost my Inuktitut and I had to learn it again. That gave me a slightly different slant on Inuktitut. I had to consciously choose my words and do my own sentence building. When I was in teacher's education, that's when I met Mick and he was teaching more on grammar and I said so that's how it works, that's why I've been saying it this way. I started teaching with him that summer.

News/North: How did you lose your Inuktitut?

Kublu I was in the hospital when I was in Montreal. I left when I was six and came back when I was eight.

News/North: Were you living in Iglulik at the time?

Kublu We lived outside of Iglulik in a place called Qaqqalik. It was just my family. I was at the nursing station for a while there before I ended up being flown down to Montreal.

News/North: And you were in Montreal for about two years?

Kublu Something like that.

News/North: And then you came back North?

Kublu Yes, but instead of being sent home I was sent home to the residential school in Iglulik. That's where I learned my Inuktitut. In a sense it was a safe environment because it was all kids and they were speaking different dialects. Mistakes were allowed, but even then, it took me two years to finally get up the courage to speak Inuktitut and it was with my grandmother. I felt comfortable enough with my grandmother.

News/North: How long did it take you to completely get it back?

Kublu I don't know if I've ever gotten it back. I'm very good at it, but there are some things that are said that I'll have to ask, "What was that you said?"

News/North: Is it a lifelong thing, always learning more Inuktitut?

Kublu I think it's lifelong because what I find happened was that the older people started simplifying their speech in order for us, who were going to school in English, to understand it. Since then, they've come to the realization that the Inuktitut the younger people are speaking is such simple Inuktitut and a lot of the more traditional words are getting lost. So they've started speaking what we call real Inuktitut.

News/North: People speak about the danger of the language being lost. Is this a real danger?

Kublu I see it as a real danger. They had those phone-in shows at CBC and someone said they didn't think that Inuktitut was going to be lost, that there would always be some spoken. I'm afraid of it getting lost and on the other hand, I wonder sometimes if we are fighting a losing battle. Some people just seem so complacent about it that you think what are we doing? Are we doing something that we want to see happen and the rest of the world doesn't really care about. I sometimes feel -- do I really need to be getting up at six in the morning and staying up to midnight to do this?

News/North: Do you teach outside of school as well as at school?

Kublu Here at Arctic College, I teach all of the language courses. And then we have the second language courses. Those I enjoy, although I gave up teaching the evening classes and my daughter has taken over the teaching of them. I am very glad for that.

News/North: What's the hardest thing about teaching Inuktitut as a second language?

Kublu What I find is they think that after a few classes of Inuktitut, they should start conversing.

News/North: Is it important for people moving here to learn to speak Inuktitut?

Kublu I think it is important. We don't expect a mastery of Inuktitut. I'm sure when they first come up here, all they hear is noise and then the odd word in English. I think that's true for any language you hear for the first time. Then you start picking up sounds and then you start learning the words. I think if they do come through our program, it will accelerate the sounds they're hearing and the words. We try to add culture to it as well.

News/North: What other languages do you speak?

Kublu Inuktitut and English. I've taken French classes, but I think it's one of these situations where you don't pick it up one night a week.

News/North: At the same time as the language is in a real danger of being lost, aren't there all kinds of new words being created?

Kublu Terminology is being created as the need arises. We have found that what happens is, depending on the location, there are variations. The words kind of grew up community by community and there are dialectical variations.

The most difficult terms to come up with are the scientific ones.

News/North: Who makes up these words?

Kublu It used to be the language bureau. There's no longer a language bureau so our students, our interpreter-translator students, have kind of taken on that responsibility. They're the ones that are going to be doing the translating when they come out of here. We try to make sure there's a consistency, but I always favour dialectical variations. I'm in favour of a standardized writing system, but I have difficulty saying this is the official Inuktitut dialect.

News/North: What's your next goal?

Kublu I would like to see second language materials developed for little kids. We've got quite a lot of materials for adults, but people don't seem to have realized that we have a second language situation here with our own Inuit children. If you're not learning your language from your mother, there's got to be another way of learning Inuktitut. There's a lot of English spoken on the street and I've heard that people come in from a different community and they feel their dialect is so different that it's not being understood. I feel that it's just that the kids here don't understand Inuktitut. That's what I'd like to see.