Iqaluit (June 30/03) - If there is one thing Nathanial and Erika Alexander prove, it's that you can't assume white people in the North do not understand Inuktitut.

Nathanial, 20, and Erika, 18, are brother and sister and fluent in Inuktitut and English. They work at Baffin Regional Hospital.

News/North: Why do you speak Inuktitut so well?

Nathanial Alexander: We were born and raised here in the North. We grew up in Pangnirtung. Our parents worked full-time so we spent a lot of our younger years at a unilingual babysitter. So we picked up the language from the elders in Pang.

Erika Alexander: My parents wanted us to learn the language as an asset for when we got older if we planned to live here in the North.

N/N: Did it affect how you learned English?

NA: Kind of. It was our first language. It wasn't too difficult. All the classes were in Inuktitut anyways. I hit Grade 4 and they took us out and put us in an ESL (English as a second language) program to try to build up our English skills.

N/N: What about your parents? What do they speak?

EA: My mom used to be bi-lingual. But they sent her South for some schooling so she kind of lost it, but she knows some.

NA: She actually grew up in Pang. My grandfather started up a hotel there, so she grew up there and went to Quebec, got her schooling, then went back up and has been here since.

N/N: Do people act surprised when you speak Inuktitut so well?

NA: Yeah, (laughs) a lot. They're kind of shocked.

N/N: What kind of comments do you hear from people?

NA: A lot of times it's 'I didn't think you'd be able to speak.'

N/N: Working here at the hospital, how often are you using Inuktitut?

NA: All the time. You answer the phone. Most of the calls are up island, so they are poor English, so you speak Inuktitut with them. Walk-ins, not as much, but some of them come in and they don't understand English as well, so it's quite an asset.

EA: A lot of them prefer to speak their native tongue, too. A lot of them understand English, but would rather speak Inuktitut and feel more comfortable.

N/N: Do you remember learning Inuktitut?

EA: I remember learning English more. My first day of school here (in Iqaluit), they tried to get me to read a book in front of the class. I couldn't read the first line.

NA: I remember learning Inuktitut, but it wasn't learning it. It was always around. You grew up with it. English was at home. We'd speak Inuktitut among us kids, and if we wanted to speak to our parents it would be in English. And it would be quite poor English. They corrected us a lot. That's what kept up our English while we were still learning Inuktitut through the school system. Up there it's until Grade 6. You go through Inuktitut first and then the transition into English.

N/N: Is it rare how well you can speak?

EA: I know three other white people who can do it.

NA: There are a couple of people like Mick Mallon, who learned. And Janet McGrath.

EA: Ken Harper, Dr. Stubbing...

N/N: So it's a small group.

EA: It's different for us, too, because we learned it first, before we learned English. All our first words were in Inuktitut, not English.

NA: It's not really recessive...

N/N: Are you worried about the language?

EA: I see it fading away in the larger communities. But in smaller, traditional communities where they keep all their traditions alive, it will stay.

NA: I've noticed since moving from Pang, we've found it come down a level because a lot of people throw in a lot of English when they speak Inuktitut. A lot of slang you never hear up island. You just got all these slang words for a whole bunch of things that you never thought would have words.

N/N: Can you get too old to learn Inuktitut?

EA: I say when you learn it young it's a lot better because you get the pronunciation. All the letters are enunciated and pronounced the same way -- in every single word. There's no silent letters.

NA: I was at Carleton and they had a course for introducing Inuktitut to students... I think it's difficult for older people to try to grasp the idea of making so many guttural sounds for the letters. But if they have languages they can relate to like German or French, then they can link the two.

N/N: So, you were saying it made school hard for you, sometimes people would tease you.

NA: It's a big jump coming here, where English was dominant. I was in Grade 7 and I had to start writing essays. I didn't know much about computers either. Smaller communities didn't have the higher-end technology.

EA: We didn't know what fractions were. We didn't know how to multiply, divide.

N/N: How did you get through it?

NA: They started me off in the general stream. As I progressed I went into the academic stream.

EA: They sent me home with books of homework every night. Learning how to use a calculator, how to hand write and stuff. They put me in general stream. I got along with general stream students. They treated me better than the academic stream people did.

N/N: Having been through this stuff in the schools, if you could go back, would you change anything?

NA: Maybe starting English earlier. It was quite a shock. I was in Grade 7, so I'm like, pumped.

Then they tell me I have a Grade 4 Math level, and maybe a Grade 3 reading level. Quite the chop down. But yeah, having to do it again, I'd keep the language.

EA: It was worth it. I want to make sure my daughter (Nicole, two-years old) learns it too.