Editing Inuit languages (section)

== Vocabulary ==

=== Toponymy and names ===
Both the names of places and people tend to be highly prosaic when translated. ''[[Iqaluit]]'', for example, is simply the plural of the noun ''iqaluk'' "fish" ("Arctic char", "salmon" or "trout" depending on dialect<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.livingdictionary.com/search/viewResults.jsp?resultsId=1349313947885ri |title=iqaluk |work=Asuilaak Living Dictionary|access-date=2011-07-19}}</ref>). ''[[Igloolik]]'' (''Iglulik'') means ''place with houses'', a word that could be interpreted as simply ''town''; ''[[Inuvik]]'' is ''place of people''; ''[[Baffin Island]]'', ''Qikiqtaaluk'' in Inuktitut, translates approximately to "big island".

Common native names in Canada include "Ujarak" (rock), "Nuvuk" (headland), "Nasak" (hat, or hood), "Tupiq" or "Tupeq" in Kalaallisut (tent), and "Qajaq" ([[kayak]]). Inuit also use animal names, traditionally believing that by using those names, they took on some of the characteristics of that animal: "Nanuq" or "Nanoq" in Kalaallisut (polar-bear), "Uqalik" or "Ukaleq" in Kalaallisut (Arctic hare), and "Tiriaq" or "Teriaq" in Kalaallisut (mouse) are favourites. In other cases, Inuit are named after dead people or people in traditional tales, by naming them after anatomical traits those people are believed to have had. Examples include "Itigaituk" (has no feet), "Anana" or "Anaana" (mother), "Piujuq" (beautiful) and "Tulimak" (rib). Inuit may have any number of names, given by parents and other community members.

=== Disc numbers and Project Surname ===
In the 1920s, changes in lifestyle and serious epidemics such as [[tuberculosis]] made the [[government of Canada]] interested in tracking the Inuit of Canada's Arctic. Traditionally Inuit names reflect what is important in Inuit culture: environment, landscape, seascape, family, animals, birds, spirits. However these traditional names were difficult for non-Inuit to parse. Also, the agglutinative nature of Inuit language meant that names seemed long and were difficult for southern bureaucrats and missionaries to pronounce.

Thus, in the 1940s, the Inuit were given [[disc numbers]], recorded on a special leather ID tag, similar to a [[Dog tag (identifier)|dog tag]]. They were required to keep the tag with them always. (Some tags are now so old and worn that the number is polished out.) The numbers were assigned with a letter prefix that indicated location (E = east), community, and then the order in which the census-taker saw the individual. In some ways this state renaming was abetted by the churches and missionaries, who viewed the traditional names and their calls to power as related to [[shamanism]] and [[paganism]].

They encouraged people to take Christian names. So a young woman who was known to her relatives as "Lutaaq, Pilitaq, Palluq, or Inusiq" and had been baptised as "Annie" was under this system to become [[Ann Meekitjuk Hanson|Annie E7-121]].<ref name="Annie">{{cite web |url=http://www.nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/name.html |title=What's in a name? |author=Ann Meekitjuk Hanson |publisher=nunavut.com |access-date=2012-02-20 |archive-date=2016-11-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161107123650/http://www.nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/name.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> People adopted the number-names, their family members' numbers, etc., and learned all the region codes (like knowing a telephone area code).

Until Inuit began studying in the south, many did not know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. Then in 1969, the government started Project Surname,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tradition-orale.ca/english/project-surname-102.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111002064546/http://www.tradition-orale.ca/english/project-surname-102.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 2, 2011 |title=Project Surname: Listening to Our Past |publisher=Francophone Association of Nunavut |access-date=2012-02-20 }}</ref> headed by [[Abe Okpik]], to replace number-names with [[patrilineal]] "family surnames".

=== Words for snow ===
{{further|Eskimo words for snow}}

A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for [[snow]]. This is not accurate, and results from a misunderstanding of the nature of polysynthetic languages. In fact, the Inuit have only a few base roots for snow: 'qanniq-' ('qanik-' in some dialects), which is used most often like the verb ''to snow'', and 'aput', which means ''snow'' as a substance. Parts of speech work very differently in the Inuit language than in English, so these definitions are somewhat misleading.

The Inuit languages can form very long words by adding more and more descriptive affixes to words. Those affixes may modify the syntactic and semantic properties of the base word, or may add qualifiers to it in much the same way that English uses adjectives or prepositional phrases to qualify nouns (e.g. "falling snow", "blowing snow", "snow on the ground", "snow drift", etc.)

The "fact" that there are many Inuit words for snow has been put forward so often that it has become a [[Snowclone|journalistic cliché]].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tahaz-0F6zMC |title=The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language |author=Geoffrey K. Pullum |publisher=University Of Chicago Press |pages=236 |isbn=0-226-68534-9 |year=1991 |access-date=2012-02-20}}</ref>

=== Numbers ===
[[File:IqaluitStop.jpg|thumb|A [[stop sign]] in [[Inuktitut syllabics]] and English]]
The Inuit use a [[base-20]] counting system.