Inuktitut

Inuktitut (Inuktitut: ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ) is a dialect of the Inuit language spoken in Canada and Greenland. It is the primary Inuit language in the Nunavut region, where it has about 16,000 speakers. It is also spoken in Nunavik, the northern third of Quebec, and in Nunavut's Nunavik-Québecois region. It has about 10,000 speakers in Greenland, where it is known as Kalaallisut or West Greenlandic. Inuktitut is a polysynthetic language with an agglutinative morphology. This means that words can be very long, made up of many different morphemes (units of meaning), and that new words can be easily created by adding affixes to existing words. For example, the Inuktitut word for "person" is inuk (singular) or inuit (plural). The word for "house" is qarmaq. To say "the person's house", you would say inuk qarmaq. Inuktitut is also a very rich and descriptive language. For example, there are many different words for snow, depending on its type, temperature, or other characteristics. The Inuit language is currently undergoing a process of modernization, as more and more Inuit youth are choosing to use English or French instead of Inuktitut. However, there are efforts being made to revive and promote the use of Inuktitut, through immersion programs, dictionaries, and other resources.