#netsilik

[vladcvnt]

Koveyook and friends

[tulunnguaq]

Hi! Sorry this is a really random question, but have you seen any of the Terror, and if so do you know what language Silna is speaking ? Nive Nielsen the actress playing Silna/lady silence is Greenlandic but in the programme one of the other characters say she’s speaking Inuktitut. Feel free to ignore this I’m just really curious and I haven’t got anywhere googling this lol

Hi there. I haven’t actually come across The Terror but it looks pretty interesting.

I had a quick look at a couple of clips online, eg this one from episode 5:

As far as I can tell she is saying Huuqmi tuqujumavit? which would be Inuktitut.

The (standard, ie West) Greenlandic equivalent would be Soormi toqujumavit?

So as you can see the two are very close which is why Inuit is sometimes described as a single language existing in a dialect continuum from Alaska to Greenland, rather than multiple languages.

So it would not be difficult for a native Greenlander like Nive Nielsen to play someone speaking Inuktitut. I note she is described as a Netsilik inuk, but I don’t know enough of the dialect there to know how accurate the dialogue is generally. The following chart from Fortescue* shows that Netsilik (Net) is one of the West Canadian Inuit (WCI) dialects. One notable point is the appearance of “h” for standard Inuit “s” which Fortescue confirms is a standard reflex for Netsilik Inuit (along with the neighbouring Copper (Cop) and Caribou (Car) dialects, as well as the North Greenland (NG) dialect, which was populated by a relatively recent migration from Canada). So it may well be accurate.

*Comparative Eskimo Dictionary (Fortescue et al, 1994)

Breakdown:

huuq/sooq - why

-mi - emphatic particle (and/then...)

tuqu/toqu - die

-juma- - want

-vit - you (2s interrogative mood, intransitive)

[lasaraconor]

Portrait de Magito, jeune Inuit de Netsilik, dans le Nunavut, Canada (anonyme, 1905)

[butternuggets-blog]

I'm not a professional linguist so I usually use Google Translate for my fanfiction needs.

Is it acceptable and accurate to use it to translate Netsilik? Or is there a better translation website I can use? Should I be using Netsilik or Inuktitut?

I'm going to have to put some Netsilik in 'Roll Better!' eventually and I want to get it right.

UPDATE: @undomestication has given me some links to work with (thank you very much again for that) but I was wondering if anyone has typed up a Netsilik/English script of Silna's lines in the show. And if anyone has, could you please forward me a copy.

[hangingfire]

Wild swing in the dark here: Terror fans, does anyone have a lead on a transcript of the dialogue spoken by Johnny Issaluk's character at the beginning of episode 1? Not the translated subtitles—a transcript of the actual Inuktitut words. I'm looking into this for Reasons.

[ultimatraditor]

So, I’ve been doing some basic research on the Netsilik culture for a possible Terror fic and, apparently, according to Balikci, a popular way of resolving personal conflicts (next to exchanging wives because why not) is an epic rap battle.

It’s like “excuse me while I go home and write an entire goddam song about your sorry piece of ass for my wife to deliver in front of the whole village”. The content of those songs, as one can imagine...

[tulunnguaq]

So after these recent two posts, here’s my first attempt to add some Inuktitut subtitles to The Terror, fittingly starting from the start. 

I struggled with this a bit, since my own studies have been on Kalaallisut (the dialect of Inuit spoken in Greenland), and I may not have got this quite right, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m very happy to be corrected!  I have done a bit more but I’ll start with this for now.

Isumata.ngu.juq taku.nni.laur.łuni Aglukkar.mik una

Leader.be.3s-INDICATIVE see.ANTI-PASSIVE.PAST.4s-CONTEMPORATIVE Aglukkaq-INSTRUMENTAL that-one

I can’t quite match the grammar to the Interpreter’s translation, which is why I’m still not 100%, and also the final word I’m not sure about either. 

One other thing following up from the question in the posts above re Silna. Whereas she more clearly appears to be speaking Netsilik dialect, the Netsilik Hunter’s dialogue actually appears to be a different dialect, more like “standard” Inuktitut from a more eastern dialect. Notably the “s” is pronounced (whereas Netsilik lacks “s”, using “h”). This may be because Nive Nielsen was a Greenlander making a more conscious effort to imitate what was a foreign dialect to her, whereas Johnny Issaluk was already a native Inuktitut speaker and it was felt that he should just speak his native dialect (presumably from Chesterfield Inlet where he was raised). Speculation on my part.  Distance between Gjoa Haven and Chesterfield Inlet shown below. 

[artchrisdale]

Raw Fish On The River On A Sunny Arctic Day

Netsilik Eating Raw Fish Weir On Good Sunny Arctic Day

Water it the River of Life, we're all you need is together. Painting by Chris Dale of Netsilik fishing in their weir, eating raw fish on a s

Water the River of Life; we are all you need together. On a sunny Arctic day, fishing involves eating raw river fish.

The Netsilik are part of the Inuit who live predominantly in Nunavut, in Canada.