#inuit language

[willowbilly]

Inuit Names in The Terror AMC

Aglukkaq: agluq-kkaq, “the one who strides well.” The verb stem agluq- means “to step over; to stride,” together with -kkaq “one who performs a particular action well.” A legitimate given name.

Aja: Seemingly aja or ajak, “maternal aunt,” which in modern Natchiliŋmiutut proper is atchak “paternal aunt.” A legitimate given name, merely in what may be the wrong dialect.

*Silna: Seemingly Dan Simmons’ original combination of Sila and Sedna, i.e., AN UNGRAMMATICAL NEONYM. Sila is Hila in modern Natchiliŋmiutut, a noun meaning “air, weather, outside, atmosphere, intelligence, wisdom.” The principal resident spirit of the air’s personal name is Naarřuk, naaq-rřuk “the big belly,” and he is a giant baby boy spirit. Hila and Naarřuk are the same being. Sedna is the Anglicized form of the demonstrative pronoun sanna, which I think in Natchiliŋmiutut is kanna “that one down there, such as under the ocean (not visible).” This was a traditional circumlocution for the female spirit Nuliajuk, nulik-ajuk “the lubricious one,” the principal resident spirit of the sea. Sila, Hila, Naarřuk, and Nuliajuk are all legitimate given names. Silna is an illegitimate given name.

Kuvijuq: kuvi+juq, “he who pours.” Kuvi- is a verb stem meaning “to spill or pour; to spill or pour it; to spill or pour on (them/it).” *ku is a verb root for “downward movement or orientation” that can also be found in the noun kuuk “river.” +t/juq is the intransitive 3rd person singular indicative mood verb ending “she/he/it/they (singular),” but here it functions as a noun participle. In modern Natchiliŋmiutut proper, this would be Kuviřuq. A legitimate given name.

Netsilik Hunter: Netsilik is derived from Natsilik i.e. Natchilik, “the one with ringed seal,” meaning Netsilik Lake and its environs. Outsiders applied “Netsilik Inuit” both to Natchiliŋmiut and to other Inuit groups. Aŋunahuaqti is modern Natchiliŋmiutut proper for “hunter,” related to the noun aŋut “man.”

Tuunbaq: tuuŋŋaq, tuunŋaq, “shaman's helping spirit.” A legitimate given name, although probably not actually its own.

[monkeywrench87]

You shouldn't have come here, qallunaaq!

Mike:...what did you just call me?

Another piece with (my personal) interpretation of the ski lodge slasher.

The ski lodge slasher has the upper hand...for now.

Concept approved by @j3lly-f1shu0 enjoy!

The character ski lodge slasher and Mike Savage belongs to @slashficofficial

[vivian-the-barbarian]

Seeing people online get mad about “why are there over 100 genders now!!??” makes me think about how people say “The Eskimos have over fifty words for snow” but actually there’s only one word for “snow” but they add descriptors to it in a way that made a European linguist think they were using different vocabulary words

[pancakepoet]

(I'm not very knowledgeable about Inuktitut, so please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Edit: @akishoo has informed me that the "ikki" part means cold, not the "naqtuq" part.

The Inuktitut word for "it's cold"/"it's cold outside" is ᐃᒃᑮᖅᓇᖅᑐᖅ ("ikkiiqnaqtuq"). When I hear it spoken aloud, the "naqtuq" part sounds a lot like Nuktuk. From my limited knowledge, this dude:

is named "Cold."

[gremlin-078]

Daily Etymology #114

Kayak

Kayak comes from the Inuktitut qajaq, meaning a man's boat, thought to come from the Proto-Eskimo *qyak. Inuktitut is an Inuit language spoken in eastern Canada and Alaska, which today has around 35,000 native speakers. Proto-Eskimo is the reconstructed ancestor of the Eskimo languages and was spoken in c.2000 BCE by the ancestors of the Inuit and Yupik peoples.

[tulunnguaq]

I saw this query on Reddit recently. Another Redditor aiviik came in with most of the answer, and I chipped in with part of it. It’s quite interesting from both a language and indigenous art perspective, so I thought I’d share it here.

The syllabics on the image:

ᔪᓯ ᐸᐱ

ᑯᓕᓴᔭᒧ ᓴᓇᓯᒪᔪ ᐊᒍᑎ ᐃᓗᓕᐅᑐ ᔪᓯ ᐸᐱ ᐳᕕᓂᑐ ᑯᐃᐱ ᑲᓇᑕ 1975

Transliterated literally into roman characters it would be:

Jusi Papi

kulisajamu sanasimaju aguti iluliutu jusi papi puvinitu kuipi kanata 1975

However, this is a somewhat abbreviated form of syllabics, and from what I can see this approach is used on other similar artworks of the period. In order to interpret this properly, we have to imply in a number of additional (implied) letters, essentially those which would appear as superscript syllabics in the usual script, which have the effect of adding a vowelless consonant (since all normal-sized syllabics have an embedded vowel), or in some cases have the effect of changing a ‘k’ to ‘q’. Long vowels would also have a superscript dot, but I don’t see these being relevant here. 

So if we add these in we would get the following:

ᔪᓯ ᐸᐱᖅ

ᖁᓪᓕᓴᔭᕐᒧᑦ ᓴᓇᓯᒪᔪᖅ ᐊᖑᑎ ᐃᓪᓗᓕᐅᕐᑐᖅ ᔪᓯ ᐸᐱᖅ ᐳᕕᕐᓂᑐᖅ ᑯᐃᐱᒃ ᑲᓇᑕ 1975

which can then be transliterated as follows:

Jusi Papiq

qullisajarmut sanasimajuq - anguti illuliurtuq - jusi papiq - puvirnituq, kuipik, kanata 1975

Glossary:

qullisajarmut - onto soapstone. qulliq is a stone lamp (for burning seal or whale oil), and qullisajaq is soapstone (possibly formed with suffixes -(k)saq [take] material for making X, and -jaq passive form, a thing which has been). -mut is the allative case.

sanasimajuq - it has been made

anguti - a man (also angut)

illuliurtuq - he builds an igloo 

jusi papiq - Josie Paperk

puvirnituq - Puvirnituq

kuipik - Quebec

kanata - Canada

Translation:

[Print] 20/45. Carving on soapstone. A man builds an igloo. Josie Paperk,  Puvirnituq, Quebec, Canada; 1975

Background:

Josie Paperk is also known as Josie Papialuk. 

Some more detail on the artist is available here and here. An extract below:

Josie Pamiutu Papialuk, known also as "Josie Paperk" or simply "Puppy," was born in 1918 near Issuksiuvit Lake, just inland from Povungnituk.  After the death of his wife Martha in 1975, he continued to live there with his only surviving son.  Josie is a very jovial man, regarded in the community as an eccentric joker.  His art is indicative of a special kind of genius: it reveals both his profound sense of observation and a keen insight.

Josie produces both carvings and prints.  He was one of the first Povungnituk artists to become involved in printmaking in the early 1960s.  Initially, he produced small, whimsical soapstone carvings of birds, fish and human heads. Many elements of Josie's unique style are already apparent in some of his early carvings: scratched footprints to indicate past or future directions, and captions to explain the action.

In both his carvings and prints, Josie employs undulating lines to depict such invisible phenomena as wind, voices or bird chatter.  In the introduction to the 1983 catalogue JOSIE PAPERK, Marion Scott remarked that "[Josie] has been to capture in a gentle, philosophical and sometimes humorous way, the very essence of existence."  George Swinton described his work as "naïve realism," a style which to this day remains puzzling to most Inuit artists.  

Unlike many artists who might attempt to disguise a flaw in the stone, Josie often directs attention to it by carving a circle around it.  This attitude towards maintaining and, to a certain extent, exploiting the integrity of the materials used is shared by many contemporary southern artists.

Josie's inclination towards whimsy does not cloud his artistic judgement. When asked why he sometimes puts only one leg on his birds, Josie answered "I put the second leg on when I need the extra money."                            

[allthingslinguistic]

Bringing An Inuit Language Into The Digital Age

Nunavut’s language experts looked to the past to invent new words for the digital age. “Meet the North,” a series that ventures into the lives of some of...

An interesting article about creating and adapting Inuktitut vocabulary for the digital age. Excerpt: 

I’m sitting at a patio table with two of Nunavut’s foremost language experts, Leena Evic and Eva Aariak. We’re in Eva’s backyard drinking tea, eating homemade cookies and talking about the internet. And they’re about to blow my mind.

The Inuktitut word for internet, “ikiaqqijjut,” is often translated as “the tool to travel through layers.” But Eva stresses that it needs more explanation.

“The idea is that when shamans are in their trance, they can go anywhere around the world, including the moon,” Eva says. “When our elders heard there was the first man on the moon, they said, ‘They are not the first. We have been there and done that,’ because shamans have been there. Shamans would travel in a trance; if they want to check on their family far away, they can visit them and see how they’re doing.”

“While their body is right here,” says Leena.

“That’s what internet does, eh?” says Eva, “Especially with Facebook now, too, you can see how your family is doing.”

Read the whole thing.

[willowbilly]

Hi! You seem like the right person to ask: what is the word Silna uses that gets heard as “huk-kah-hoi” and translated as “disappear”?

This is something I've wondered too, so I'll give you my best speculations! As a non-fluent L2 speaker of Iñupiatun I'm limited in my knowledge and by my dictionaries, so if anyone wiser ever corrects or clarifies anything I say here, I'd be most grateful! Iñupiatun is not Natchiliŋmiutut!

The Terror scripts really saved me here. Note that when referencing the scripts, the Natchiliŋmiutut orthography therein is nonstandard; e.g. the Natchiliŋmiutut letter ř is rendered indistinguishable from r, š from s, and y and j are both used, perhaps interchangeably, etc.

The line is scripted:

LADY SILENCE (20) (CONT'D) If you do not leave now, you will disappear. Tarvauruq aulanngikkuvhi, huqaruirniaqtuhi.

The word is repeated in what I guess to be a Qikiqtaaluk dialect in the scripted line:

CROZIER (21) She says if we do not leave now, we are going to-- susqaruisinnarniaqtugut.

"We (plural) will disappear."

This was replaced onscreen with "huk-kah-hoi."

To correct Silna's scripted line as best I know (and to use the letter ŋ), it might be written:

Tařvauřuq aullaŋŋikkuvhi, huqaruirniaqtuhi.

With comparison, I believe that the single l in aullaq- "to depart/leave" and the second s in Crozier's line are typos (though may be mistaken); "suqaruisinnarniaqtugut" might be right, or the q may have been meant to be geminated: "suqqaruisinnarniaqtugut." Is there also a missing q in there? "Suqaruiqsinnarniaqtugut" maybe? I'm not sure, but there does seem to be a phonologically assimilated q in huqaruiq+niaq. Many postbases will drop a preceding consonant.

"Huk-kah-hoi" seems to correlate to huqaruiq- with a dropped final q (that is dropped due to Crozier not hearing it, rather than a postbase).

Hu(-) is a noun and verb stem and an interrogative pronoun meaning "what" or "to be what;" kina "who" is not in the 2023 Hadlari and Ikajuqtigiit Natchiliŋmiutut dictionary, which instead lists huna as "who;" it may not have the su/suna versus kiña "what vs. who" distinction that Iñupiatun does, but I can't find a handy source that explicitly states this.

The noun-to-verb postbase -qaq- means "to have/possess," and in Natchiliŋmiutut -qaq- can also mean "there is/there are." Therefore: huqaq- "to have what/something"/"to be there what/something/someone."

+ruiq- may be made from the +ruk- "to want/to crave/to feel the physical need for" postbase as seen in imirukpit "do you (sg.) want/need water," or it may be a form of the +huk- "to feel/experience" postbase that isn't cited on tuhaalaŋa.ca. If that r is actually an ř that's deleting the q, I don't know what it might be. And then the -iq- postbase means "to no longer," which sounds the same as in Iñupiatun piiq- "to vanish"/"to die" etc.

+niaq+tuhi is "you (plural) will (future tense)."

Huqaruirniaqtuhi "You all will no longer be."