Nunatsiavummiutut
Encyclopedia
The Nunatsiavummiut dialect, or Nunatsiavummiutut, also known as Labradorimiutut and called Inuttut by its speakers, is a dialect of the Inuit language
. It was once spoken across northern Labrador
by Inuit
people, whose traditional lands have now been consolidated as Nunatsiavut
and Nunatukavut
.
The language has a distinct writing system, created by German missionaries from the Moravian Church in Greenland
in the 1760s. This separate writing tradition, the remoteness of Nunatsiavut from other Inuit communities, and its unique history of cultural contacts have made it into a distinct dialect with a separate literary tradition. It shares features, including Schneider's Law, the reduction of alternate sequences of consonant clusters by simplification, with some Inuit dialects spoken in Quebec. It is differentiated by the tendency to neutralize velars and uvulars, i.e. /g/ ~ /r/, and /k/ ~ /q/ in word final and pre-consonantal positions, as well as by the assimilation of consonants in clusters, compared to other dialects. Morphological systems (~juk/~vuk) and syntactic patterns (e.g. the ergative) have similarly diverged. Nor are the Labrador dialects uniform: there are separate variants traceable to a number of regions, e.g. Rigolet, Nain, Hebron, etc.
Although Nunatsiavut claims over 4,000 inhabitants of Inuit descent, only 550 reported any Inuit language
to be their mother tongue in the 2001 census, mostly in the town of Nain
. Nunatsiavummiutut is seriously endangered.
).
loanword
s used in Nunatsiavummiutut date from the period of the German missionaries of Moravian Church (1760s).
Inuit language
The Inuit language is traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador. The related Yupik languages are spoken in western and southern Alaska and Russian Far East, particularly the Diomede Islands, but is severely endangered in Russia today and...
. It was once spoken across northern Labrador
Labrador
Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle...
by Inuit
Inuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
people, whose traditional lands have now been consolidated as Nunatsiavut
Nunatsiavut
Nunatsiavut is an autonomous area claimed by the Inuit in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The settlement area includes territory in Labrador extending to the Quebec border. In 2002, the Labrador Inuit Association submitted a proposal for limited autonomy to the government of Newfoundland and...
and Nunatukavut
Nunatukavut
Nunatuĸavut or NunatuKavut means "Our ancient land" in the ancestral Inuktitut dialect of the NunatuKavummuit people. The Inuit region encompasses Southern Labrador, from the Churchill River, South to Lodge Bay and West to the extent of the official border between Quebec and Labrador...
.
The language has a distinct writing system, created by German missionaries from the Moravian Church in Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
in the 1760s. This separate writing tradition, the remoteness of Nunatsiavut from other Inuit communities, and its unique history of cultural contacts have made it into a distinct dialect with a separate literary tradition. It shares features, including Schneider's Law, the reduction of alternate sequences of consonant clusters by simplification, with some Inuit dialects spoken in Quebec. It is differentiated by the tendency to neutralize velars and uvulars, i.e. /g/ ~ /r/, and /k/ ~ /q/ in word final and pre-consonantal positions, as well as by the assimilation of consonants in clusters, compared to other dialects. Morphological systems (~juk/~vuk) and syntactic patterns (e.g. the ergative) have similarly diverged. Nor are the Labrador dialects uniform: there are separate variants traceable to a number of regions, e.g. Rigolet, Nain, Hebron, etc.
Although Nunatsiavut claims over 4,000 inhabitants of Inuit descent, only 550 reported any Inuit language
Inuit language
The Inuit language is traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador. The related Yupik languages are spoken in western and southern Alaska and Russian Far East, particularly the Diomede Islands, but is severely endangered in Russia today and...
to be their mother tongue in the 2001 census, mostly in the town of Nain
Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador
Nain or Naina is the northernmost town of any size in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, located about 370 kilometres by air from Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The town was established as a Moravian mission in 1771 by Jens Haven and other missionaries...
. Nunatsiavummiutut is seriously endangered.
Alphabet
Nunatsiavut uses another variant devised by German-speaking Moravian missionaries, which included the letter ĸ (kraKra (letter)
Kra is a character formerly used to write the Kalaallisut language of Greenland and is now only found in the Labrador Inuit Language of Inuttitut, a distinct Inuktitut dialect. It is visually similar to a Latin small capital letter K and the Greek letter kappa κ.It is used to denote the sound...
).
| Capital letters | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Â Â is a letter of the Friulian, Romanian, Vietnamese, French, Galician, Portuguese, Frisian, Welsh, Turkish, and Walloon alphabets.- Croatian and Serbian :... |
A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
ĸ | L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
W W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V... |
| Lower case | ||||||||||||||||||||
| â | a | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | ĸ | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | t | u | v | w |
- â = aa
- e = ii
- o = uu
- ĸ = q
Vocabulary comparison
The comparison of some animal names in the two dialects of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut language:| Inuktitut | Nunatsiavummiutut | meaning |
| siksik ᓯᒃᓯᒃ | sitsik | ground squirrel Ground squirrel The ground squirrels are members of the squirrel family of rodents which generally live on or in the ground, rather than trees. The term is most often used for the medium-sized ground squirrels, as the larger ones are more commonly known as marmots or prairie dogs, while the smaller and less... |
| qugjuk ᖃᒡᔪᒃ | ĸutjuk | tundra swan |
| aarluk ᐋᕐᓗᒃ | âlluk | killer whale |
| amaruq ᐊᒪᕈᖅ | amaguk | gray wolf Gray Wolf The gray wolf , also known as the wolf, is the largest extant wild member of the Canidae family... |
| isunngaq ᐃᓱᙵᖅ | isungak | pomarine jaeger |
| kanguq ᑲᖑᖅ | kangak | snow goose Snow Goose The Snow Goose , also known as the Blue Goose, is a North American species of goose. Its name derives from the typically white plumage. The genus of this bird is disputed... |
| tuktu ᑐᒃᑐ | tuttuk | caribou |
| tiriganniaq ᑎᕆᒐᓐᓂᐊᖅ | tigiganniak | arctic fox Arctic fox The arctic fox , also known as the white fox, polar fox or snow fox, is a small fox native to Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and is common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. The Greek word alopex, means a fox and Vulpes is the Latin version... |
| umingmak ᐅᒥᖕᒪᒃ | umimmak | musk ox Musk Ox The muskox is an Arctic mammal of the family Bovidae, noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted by males, from which its name derives. This musky odor is used to attract females during mating season... |
German loanwords
The GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s used in Nunatsiavummiutut date from the period of the German missionaries of Moravian Church (1760s).
- ailvat (< Ger. elf) 'eleven'
- ainsik (< Ger. eins) 'one o'clock'
- fiarâ (< Ger. vier) 'four o'clock'
- Fraitâg ( < Ger. Freitag) 'Friday'
- kâttopalak (< Ger. Kartoffel) 'potato'
- Metvog (< Ger. Mittwoch) 'Wednesday'
- Montâg (< Ger. Montag) 'Monday'
- naina (< Ger. neun) 'nine'
- sâksit (< Ger. sechs) 'six'
- senat (< Ger. zehn) 'ten'
- sepat (< Ger. sieben) 'seven'
- silipa (< Ger. Silber) 'coin'
- situnati (< Ger. Stunde) 'hour'
- Sontâg (< Ger. Sonntag) 'Sunday'
- Sunâpint (< Ger. Sonnabend) 'Saturday'
- suvai (< Ger. zwei) 'two'
- suvailva (< Ger. zwölf) 'twelve'
- tarai (< Ger. drei) 'three'
- taraitijik (< Ger. dreißig) '30 odd 30 rifle and ammunition'
- Tenistâg (< Ger. Dienstag) 'Tuesday'
- Tonistâg (< Ger. Donnerstag) 'Thursday'
- viaga (< Ger. vier) 'four'
- vogik (< Ger. Woche) 'week'