The future of a language

by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 12/98) - Inuktitut is a language with incredible flexibility to describe the nuts and bolts of Northern survival -- the state of sea ice, say, or the migration habits of caribou.

But these days, Inuktitut speakers are being given the tools to deal with the bits and bytes of cutting-edge technology such as computers.

Inuktitut is remaining relevant and vital not by inventing words based on their English equivalents, as many languages do -- although it happens, as when an overworked Inuit borrows from the English "busy" to complain that he is "pisi" or "pisialuk" -- but by expressing new ideas in combinations of old words and concepts.

Take the idea of a computer. As Peter Ernerk, assistant director of heritage culture for Nunavut explains, the word translators now use is "qaritaujaq," literally meaning "similar to a brain," and as such, can be understood from Inuvik to northern Labrador, and explained even to speakers of the Inuktitut counterparts in Greenland or Russia.

Without a central language authority, the job of keeping Inuktitut -- a family of more than 100 recognized dialects and sub-dialects -- useful in a fast-changing world is falling to the translators, who often invent it as they go along.

Ernerk, who speaks of being instructed by his language rather than using it to instruct, says Canadian Inuit are gradually moving towards a single dialect thanks to more information technology and the need for communication among once isolated communities.

The resulting linguistic standard is a far cry from the situation in the 1950s, when regional differences could result in complete reversals of words' meanings.

Ernerk remembers getting off a plane in Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) 30 years ago and being warmly welcomed by natives saying not the usual "alianait" (happiness, joyous) but its exact opposite: "alianaqtuq," which was a word most other Inuit used to tell someone they were frightening or an unwelcome bad spirit.

Similar reversals could be found among speakers in Labrador and northern Quebec.

"The Inuktitut language, in many ways, is being standardized as one dialect, in Nunavut at least," Ernerk observes.

Regular meeting between Inuit groups, both formally and through the long reach of Inuktitut radio and television broadcasts are standardizing the vocabulary, he said.

"It's evolved a lot over the last 50 years," agrees Blandina Tulugarjuk, an Iqaluit translator with 15 years of experience.

"Twenty years ago, you might meet someone and you might only understand one word in 10. Now with all the travel and people moving around, and the communications, it's evolving into one language."

Inuktitut speakers around the world agree on the traditional concepts, she said, but many of the new words had to be coined during terminology workshops involving translators and the GNWT in the 1980s.

"The things that have to do with animals, hunting and body parts are the same everywhere, even in countries like Greenland which use the old Inuktitut that we don't use any more in Canada."

For all its adoption of new words and 20th-century invention, though, Inuktitut will always remain wedded to the timeless landscape of the Eastern Arctic and the people who live there.

"The tundra doesn't speak English. It only speaks Inuktitut," Ernerk said.

"On the other hand, the bush doesn't speak Inuktitut."