Inuktitut syllabics (, or , ) is an

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

-type

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

used in Canada by the

Inuktitut Inuktitut ( ; , Inuktitut syllabics, syllabics ), also known as Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the North American tree line, including parts of the provinces of ...

-speaking

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

of the

territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...

Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...

and the

Nunavik Nunavik (; ; ) is an area in Canada which comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, part of the Nord-du-Québec region and nearly coterminous with Kativik. Covering a land area of north of the 55th parallel, it is the homelan ...

region of

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

. In 1976, the Language Commission of the Inuit Cultural Institute made it the co-official script for the

Inuit languages The Inuit languages are a closely related group of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador. The Inuit ...

, along with the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

. The name derives from the root , meaning "mouth". The alternative, Latin-based writing system is named (), and it derives from , a word describing the markings or the grain in rocks. meaning "new writing system" is to be seen in contrast to (), the "old syllabics" used before the reforms of 1976. Inuktitut is one variation on

Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian languages, Algonquian, Eskimo–Aleut languages, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan languages, A ...

, and can be digitally encoded using the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

standard. The

Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ...

for Inuktitut characters is called

Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics is a Unicode block containing syllabic characters for writing Inuktitut, Carrier, Cree (along with several of its dialect-specific characters), Ojibwe, Blackfoot and Canadian Athabascan languages. Additio ...

History

The first efforts to write Inuktitut came from Moravian missionaries in

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

and

Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...

in the mid-19th century using Latin script. The first book printed in Inuktitut using Cree script was an 8-page pamphlet known as ''Selections from the

Gospel Gospel originally meant the Christianity, Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century Anno domino, AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message w ...

s in the dialect of the Inuit of Little Whale River'' (, "Jesus' words"), printed by John Horden in 1855–56 at Moose Factory for Edwin Arthur Watkins to use among the Inuit at Fort George. In November 1865, Horden and Watkins met in London under Henry Venn's direction to adapt

Cree syllabics Cree syllabics are the versions of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics used to write Cree language, Cree dialects, including the original syllabics system created for Cree and Ojibwe language, Ojibwe. There are two main varieties of syllabics for Cre ...

to the Inuktitut language. In the 1870s, Edmund Peck, another

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

missionary, started printing according to that standard. Other missionaries, and later linguists in the employ of the

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

and American governments, adapted the Latin alphabet to the dialects of the

Mackenzie River The Mackenzie River (French: ; Slavey language, Slavey: ' èh tʃʰò literally ''big river''; Inuvialuktun: ' uːkpɑk literally ''great river'') is a river in the Canadian Canadian boreal forest, boreal forest and tundra. It forms, ...

delta, the western Arctic islands and

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

Table

The Inuktitut script () is commonly presented as a

syllabary In the Linguistics, linguistic study of Written language, written languages, a syllabary is a set of grapheme, written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) mora (linguistics), morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllaba ...

. The dots on the letters in the table mark

long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not d ...

; in the Latin transcription, the vowel is doubled. For

geminate consonant In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

s, the final consonant symbol is placed before the CV syllabic, for instance ''-kku-, -nnu-'' are rendered ᒃᑯ and ᓐᓄ respectively. :''Note: An image of the chart is also available.''

Modifications

The Makivik Corporation expanded the official version of the script to restore the ''ai-pai-tai'' column. The common

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

''ai'' has generally been represented by combining the ''a'' form with a stand-alone letter ᐃ ''i.'' This fourth-vowel variant had been removed so that Inuktitut could be typed and printed using

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Selectric balls in the 1970s. The reinstatement was justified on the grounds that modern printing and typesetting equipment no longer suffers the restrictions of earlier typewriting machinery. The ''ai-pai-tai'' column is used only in Nunavik.

Notes

References

External links

Interactive syllabic chart with sound at Inuktut Tusâlanga

Inuktitut Roman-Syllabics, Syllabics-Roman transliteration
{{Eskimo-Aleut languages Canadian Aboriginal syllabics Inuktitut Inuit languages 1855 introductions