Status Updates From The Language of the Inuit: ...

|| Federal bureaucrats had not considered the strength of aboriginal identity. Forcing Inuit to become anglicized did not yield the expected results. On the contrary, the first generation of young educated bilinguals entered into politics and established associations and other organizations that challenged Euro-Canadian control over the North.

|| Linguistic and cultural assimilation then came into fashion. It was believed that the only way for Inuit to become full-fledged modern participants in mainstream society was to educate them in a school system whose curriculum would closely copy that in use in southern Canada and would resort to English as the exclusive teaching language.

|| Up to the Second World War, Inuit were generally considered unfit for formal education. The following words from a high-ranking civil servant in the federal Department of the Interior clearly express prewar views: “The educational needs of the Eskimos ... are very simple and their mental capacity for assimilating academic matters is limited”.

|| Noun
pisiq (plural pisiit)

A traditional Inuit chant or song.

Made me right away look up the etymology of the FIN casual speech word "biisi"/"biisit" (song/songs). As expected, far too recent to be related - derives from English "piece" (as in a "single") -, but I do still dig the likeness.

(This is also a great place to declare my appreciation for the familiarity in the plural formation).

|| Unikkausiq is a legend or a myth ... considered to have happened a very long time ago.

Unikkausiq? Which my FIN brain immediately registered coincidentally poetic, wanting to perceive in it likeness to "unikausi" - or "dream season/era/age".

Trying to think of possible matching phrases in FIN:

asuguuq “I totally agree with you” - "ehdottomasti" (lit. "absolutely")
aatsuk “I don’t know” - "tiedäpä…" (lit. "would that (one) knew…")
immaqaa “it is quite possible, maybe” - "ehkäpä"
amma “and, also” - "myöskin"
uvva “or” - "taikka"
aatataa “ouch!” - "auts!" (Onomatopoeia checks)
qanga “when?” - "koska?"
namut “whereto?” - "minnekä?"/"mihinkä?"

tusaqsunga aliasuttunga
“while hearing, I am glad”
- kuullessani olen onnellinen

tusaqtilugu aliasuttunga
“while [3SG] is hearing, I am glad”
- kuullessaan olen onnellinen

ikajuqtilunga aliasuttuq
“while I help, [3SG] is glad”
- auttaessani hän on onnellinen

takutillutit aliasuttugut
“while you (one) are seeing, we are glad”
- näkiessäsi olemme onnellisia

aullarama “because I leave; when I left” - koska lähden; kun/koska lähdin
utaqqigakkit “because I wait for them; when I was waiting for them” - koska odotan heitä/niitä; kun odotin heitä/niitä

aullaruma “if/when I leave” - jos/kun lähden
utaqqigukkit “if/when I wait for them” - jos/kun odotan heitä/niitä

ikajulaurliuk “may [3SG] have helped [3SG]!” (“may [3SG] help [3SG]!”) - olkoon auttanut / auttakoon

pinasuttunga “I have a job, I work” - työskentelen
tusaqtunga “I hear” - kuulen
utaqqijarma “you wait for me” - odotat minua
tusaqtuq “he/she hears” – “someone who hears” - kuuleva
tusaqtunut “because of those who hear” - kuulevien takia
utaqqijaratut “like my object of waiting (the one I am waiting for)” - kuten odottamani
tusaqpungaa? “do I hear?” - kuulenko?
qailangaviit? “will you (one) come?” - tuletko?

|| illumut pisuttuq: “toward the/a house, he/she walks” (“he/she walks to the house”)

"Kävelee talolle".

(Also: he/she - incomplete, and adds non-existing definitions to the translation; "walks to the/a house").

takuvunga “I see” - näen
takulauqtara “I saw it” - näin
illuliuqtut “they build a house” - rakentavat talon
illumiippisi “are you (many) in the house?” - oletteko talossa? / talossako olette?

|| illumi sinittuguk: “in the/a house, we (two) sleep” (“both of us sleep in a house”)

"Nukumme molemmat talossa".

|| angutini itsivajutik: “within men, you (two) sit” (“the two of you sit among men”)

"Kumpikin istutte miesten kesken" / "Kumpikin istutte miehiksenne"?

|| kiinaujanut pinasuttusi: “for monies, you (many) work” (“you work for money”)

"Työskentelette rahasta".

I like this game.

Another edition of "How concisely can you put it?":

|| illunit anginiqpaaq: “out of the houses, the biggest one” (“the biggest house”)

"Taloista suurin".

|| angutiinnit anginiqsaq: “out of two men, something bigger” (“bigger than two men”)

"Kahta miestä suurempi".

|| illumit pisuttutit: “from the/a house, you (one) walk” (“you walk from the house”)

"Kävelet talosta".

Hah. "Here it is!"

Greenlandic "Tassa!"
Whilst in Finnish "Tässä!"

(Not directly related, obvs, but a cool encounter).

This also tickled similarly:

West - East Greenlandic - Thule:
takuaa - tagivaa - tagukaa ("sees it")

FIN:
tajuaa ("understands")

____

|| angutaujuq “he is a man”

* "is a man"; no 'he' to be perceived.

No, but I really do enjoy it, having a common matching logic between the languages/dialects. A rare treat.

North Baffin - Southeast Baffin - Southwest Baffin - FIN (ENG)
tikiłłuni - tikittuni - tikitsuni - tullessaan (“while arriving, 'one'...”)
tikitchunga - tikittunga - tikittunga - tulen ("I arrive")

Indispensable to have a similarly functioning language to compare the myriad of functions to.

Ie. Central Siberian Yupik:
nuna - maa (the land)
nunam - maan (the land's)
nunameng - maalta (from the land)
nunami - maalla (on the land)
nunamun - maalle (to the land)
nunakun - maaksi (...uh)
nunatun - maan lailla (like the land)

kuuvuq - läikkyi (it spilled)
kuuvaa - läikytti ('one' spilled it)

|| ugigan ngaan tunuxtakuu tutanarulax (“she did not hear that her husband was talking to her”)

English translation all too comfortable leaning into hetero-assumptive reading; fails to capture the truer extend of the sentence: "they did not hear that their husband was talking to them". Any 'they'.

Plus, everywhere else keeps doing the usual: limits limitless 3rd person pronoun to gendered options of he/she.

|| Where sustained Euro-American contact has endured for at least a century, the aboriginal language is now spoken by a minority of the native population. School education in particular, when it has been delivered in English or Russian for many decades, has contributed to erasing Eskaleut by persuading its speakers that using their mother tongue is not really advantageous and legitimate.

|| Alutiiq is in much worse shape. In 2000 it was known by only 200 persons, none of them children, among a population of some 3,500 Pacific Gulf Yupiit. As concerns Central Siberian Yupik, ...several families now prefer to speak English at home. On the Russian mainland, only about 200 persons out of 1,200 still used Central Siberian Yupik in the late 1990s.

|| In spite of bilingual education – which appeared quite late in the linguistic history of Alaska – all Yupik languages have suffered from their contacts with Russian and English, some of them more than the others... The language had been in sharp decline since the 1970s, when its speakers accounted for 82% of the total. Outside the smaller communities, few children still have Yup’ik as their mother tongue.

|| In 1972 a State of Alaska law obliged any school with at least fifteen children whose mother tongue was not English to provide education in these children’s first language.

|| In Alaska it was only in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the advent of bilingual education in the United States, that an effort was made to standardize Yupik orthographies. A few native and non-native educators devised standard writing systems for Central Alaskan Yup’ik, Central Siberian Yupik, and Alutiiq, and they struggled to have these languages taught in Alaskan schools.

|| Between 1932 and 2004 ninety-three Yupik books have been published in Chukotka, including a primer titled ahxak, issued in 1981 by Lyudmila Ajnana and G.A. Nakazik, two local native teachers. It was reprinted in 1987 and is in current use in the three Chukotkan schools where Yupik is taught from kindergarten to grade 3. More recently, Ajnana (2003) published a small Yupik-Russian pictorial dictionary.

|| In 1937 the Latin script was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet to facilitate the learning of Russian. This alphabet has since been standardized and is still in use today.

|| In 1930s the Russian government established schools in the Chukotkan Yupiget and Chukchi settlements. Official policy encouraged local cultural development throughout the Soviet Union. To achieve this was to provide unwritten languages with writing systems and to teach them. In 1932, a Russian teacher with the help of two Yupiget students devised an orthography in Latin alphabet for Central Siberian Yupik.

|| Siberian Chukotka is the only area in the Arctic not to have ever been visited by missionaries. At the arrival of the first representatives of the Soviet power, in the 1920s, shamanism was still the predominant form of religion. Because Russian officials considered religious practice to be backward, there was no question of Christian missionaries being allowed to set foot in the area.

|| Confusion originates from the Russian period, when several Unangan (Aleuts) from the Aleutian Islands were transferred to southern Alaska. Like the Unangan, the natives of the Pacific Gulf have strongly felt Russian influence. Many of them are so-called creoles (i.e., descendants of mixed Yupiit-Russian families).

Hence, perhaps, why certain Alaskan native too might have a distant Finnish name of Peltola?