Inuktitut

About Inuktitut

Inuktitut (ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ) is the name for the varieties of Inuit spoken in Canada. It is an Eskimo-Aleut language that is known for having 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). It is primarily spoken in the territory of Nunavut, as well as in the northern regions of Quebec province.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.