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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:	The Joy of Lex
Notice:	A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:	THEBAY::SYSTEM

Created:	Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:	Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1192
Total number of notes:	42769

413.0. "The Eskimo Language" by WELSWS::MANNION (Legendary Lancashire Heroes) Thu Sep 24 1987 09:39

    An AP article appeared in yesterday's Guardian, too long to type
    it all in here, but I'll copy it to anybody who wants it.
    
    There were some rather interesting  bits in it worth general noting,
    though. 
    
    The Eskimo language is called Inuktitut in Canada, Inupit in Alaska
    and Lalaallisut in Greenland. The article does not say what the
    relationship between these three is, I assume it is a case of three
    derivatives of one source. The Inuit of Alaska and Greenland use
    the Roman alphabet, whereas the Canadians use "an exotic alphabet
    called syllabics". Upto 50 Eskimo books are published in Greenland
    each year, and are inaccessible to most Canadian Inuit, 67% of whom
    speak Inuktitut at home - despite the onslaught of English.
    
    The Inuit Circumpolar Conference is lobbying for a tripartite
    broadcasting system to be established, and for the greater use of
    Eskimo in schools - Canadian Inuit are taught in Inuktitut only
    to Grade 3.
    
    A US computer company has developed a syllabics wp system, allowing
    publication of the weekly Nunatsiaq News to be computerised.
    
    The article gives some examples of the development of Eskimo words
    for new technology -
    
    	qangattaqtitausimajug - it has been made to fly - satellite
    	qarasaasiaq - little artificial brain - computer
    
    Phillip

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
413.1	Word captures essence of meaning?	CHUCKM::MURRAY	Chuck Murray	`Fri Sep 25 1987 19:27`	6
	"qarasaasiaq" = "computer," eh? Is it just coincidental that we at DEC use "QAR" (Quality Assurance Report) to denote our internal software problem reporting system? Maybe the Eskimos' knowledge of high tech is more advanced than we suspect (:-).
413.2	Lang of the Month	MARVIN::KNOWLES	Men's sauna in corporation baths	`Fri Oct 02 1987 06:11`	19
	Inuit was the 'Language of the Month' in _Language Monthly_ (Aug 1986). One of the more notable things about Inuit Languages (two sub-familys; Aleut (or Unangan) and Inuit - including Inupiaq (or Inuk) and Yupik (or Yuk)), is the large number of demonstratives - about 30 in Aleut and Yupik. So: hakan = that one up there (e.g. a bird in the sky) gakun = that one in there (e.g. in an igloo) uman = this one unseen (e.g. something smelt, heard, felt) Inuit knowldge of high tech tends to involve stringing umpteen words together: nalunaer-asuar-ta-ut (that by which one communicates habitually) means telegraph. I suppose they don't have radio up there. I'll send photocopies of the article to anyone who wants to take up the offer in .0. bob
413.3	First Air caters to the Inuit population	DELNI::GOLDSTEIN	Pardon, is this your bar of soap?	`Tue Nov 03 1987 12:27`	5
	Those wishing to see Inuktitut script can simply fly from Boston to Ottawa on the only commercial airline serving the route, First Air. (Where you go if DECair is full.) Much of their business is running the arctic route, places like Frobisher Bay and Resolute. Their airline safety cards and schedules are trilingual.
413.4	What does it look like?	GRNDAD::STONE	Roy	`Tue Nov 03 1987 17:43`	7
	Re: .3 > Those wishing to see Inuktitut script... Does the language have its own equivalent of a written alphabet or is it a transliteration into the Roman alphabet?
413.5	Squiggly	WELSWS::MANNION	Bonnets so red	`Wed Nov 04 1987 04:20`	6
	Bob Knowles once sent me a copy of an article from Modern Languages (I think) which shows Inuktitut script. It's completely different to anything I've seen before, and is based, if I remember correctly on an Indian script. Phillip
413.6	Cree, for one	MARVIN::KNOWLES	Men's sauna in corporation baths	`Wed Nov 04 1987 08:16`	14
	Cree. To quote a bit of the article: "Inuit [I imagine Inuktitut is just the adjective derived from the people's name] has been written in a somewhat chaotic variety of scripts and altered scripts.... In Canada, the Cree alphabet ... is used beside the Latin alphabet." Incidentally, here's a tidbit from the same article that would fit in the Intriguing Etymologies note: the term Eskimo is a pejorative combination of Cree words meaning `eater of raw meet'. Bob
413.7	Does it look like APL?	MINAR::BISHOP		`Wed Nov 04 1987 10:06`	15
	If the script looks like triangles, little circles with tails, and such like sans-serif squiggles, then it is the syllabary (one symbol per syllable) invented (I believe by a missionary to the Cree). The only "native" writing method I know of in North America is that invented for Cherokee by Sequoia, and that invention was a clear case of stimulus diffusion: he knew that there were ways to write, and had seen printed English--he just did not know how that system worked, and so invented a syllabary. Such systems have been invented many times, an alphabet only once, and even there the alphabet's origin is a syllabary. That method is thus more "natural", and so often prefered by those who have to come up with a written form of a hitherto unwritten language. -John Bishop
413.8	So that's where they've gone since the crash...	REGENT::EPSTEIN	Bruce Epstein	`Thu Nov 12 1987 09:49`	2
	Yupik? Is that a person who wears tailored suits with yellow ties and suspenders, drives a BMW and lives in Kodiak?
413.9	One common language	BOLT::MINOW	Je suis marxiste, tendance Groucho	`Sun Feb 14 1988 00:51`	8
	re: .0 About 20 years ago, I met a fellow linguistics graduate student who came from Greenland. When he was in the United States to study, he travelled to Point Barrow, Alaska -- as far West as you can go in the United States -- and discovered that he had no trouble communicating in his native Eskimo with the locals.
413.10	You'd better check your compass!	GRNDAD::STONE	Roy	`Mon Feb 22 1988 23:02`	5
	Re: -.1 The language situation may be remarkable, but someone's geography is somewhat amiss...Point Barrow is the most _northern_ point in the United States. You can go considerably further west than that.