Difference between revisions of "Inuktitut phrasebook"

Revision as of 16:03, 13 April 2008

Inuktitut is the name for the varieties of Inuit spoken in Canada. It is an Eskimo-Aleut language that known for being a language with lots of very long agglutinative words, owing to the fact that there are a very large number of infixes (parts of speech which modify the meaning of a word), but it does not have the same irregularities as Indo-European languages. There is also a rumour that the language has hundreds of different words for snow, in reality there are only four (these four are: spread-out snow aput, snow like salt pokaktok, newly-drifted snow akelrorak and soft snow mauyaôlertok). There are a few (not hundreds) of words relating to snow eg. snow block (auverk), igloo (iglu), snow knife (panar), snow on clothes, boots etc. (ayak).

Pronunciation Guide

Vowels

A a 

Like "a" in "cat".

E e 

Like "e" in "bet".

I i 

Like "ee" in "feet".

O o 

Like "o" in "hot".

U u 

Like "u" in "put".

Consonants

D d 

Like "d" in "dad".

G g 

Like "g" in "get".

J j 

Like "y" in "yet".

K k 

Like "k" in "oak".

L l 

Like "l" in "let".

M m 

Like "m" in "man".

N n 

Like "n" in "no".

P p 

Like "p" in "pan".

Q q 

Like "c" in "car".

R r 

Like "r" in "road".

S s 

Like "sh" in "shot".

T t 

Like "t" in "stop".

W w 

Like "w" in "wet".