Eskimo-Aleut Language Family

Introduction

Iditarod

It is hypothesized that the nomadic Inuit people originated in northeastern Siberia. Some time around 2,000 BC they began to migrate eastward across the Bering Straits to Alaska and then across northern Canada to Greeenland. This migration may have taken as long as 1,000 years. Today, most Inuit people have given up their nomadic lifestyle and live in settled communities. The name Inuit means "the people." Eskimo is a derogatory word in Algonquian which means "eater of raw flesh."

The Eskimo-Aleut family consists of a continuum of languages/dialects spoken by close to 100,000 (150,000 in some estimates) people who live in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, and in an area stretching along the Aleutian Islands into Siberia. It is one of the most geographically spread language families in the world.

According to Ethnologue, there are 11 members of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, one of them extinct, that can be classified into three branches: Aleut, Eskimo, and Yupik. The table below shows the names of the language varieties, number of speakers, and geographic distribution. Greenland and Denmark have the largest number of speakers (about 54,000), followed by Canada (about 35,000). The language is all but extinct in Russia with only a thousand or so speakers remaining.

Aleut
Aleut	300	Aleutian Chain, Pribilofs, Alaskan Peninsula. Also spoken in Russia.
Eskimo
Inupiatun, Northern Alaskan (Inupiat, "Eskimo")	8,000	Norton Sound and Point Hope, Alaska. Also spoken in Canada
Inupiatun, Northwest Alaskan	4,000	Alaska, Kobuk River, Noatak River, Seward Peninsula, and Bering Strait.
Inuktitut, Eastern Canadian	14,000	West of Hudson Bay and east through Baffin Island, Quebec, and Labrador.
Inuktitut, Western Canadian	4,000	Central Canadian Arctic, and west to the Mackenzie Delta and coastal area
Inuktitut, Greenlandic (Kalallisut)	47,800	Greenland, Denmark
Yupik (Inupiaq)
Alaskan
Yupik, Pacific Gulf	400	Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak Island
Yupik, Central	10,000	Nunivak Island, Alaska coast from Bristol Bay to Unalakleet on Norton Sound and inland along Nushagak, Kuskokwim, and Yukon rivers.
Siberian
Yupik, Central Siberian	1,050	St. Lawrence Island, Alaska; Gambell and Savonga villages, Alaska. Also spoken in Russia.
Yupik, Naukan	75	Chukotka Peninsula, Russia
Yupik, Sirenik	extinct	Chukotka Peninsula, Russia

Inuktitut is recognized as an official language in Greenland (along with English). It is taught in schools, and as a result, literacy rates there are quite high. Inuktitut is also used in electronic and print media.
In Canada, Inuktitut is recognized as the official language of Nunavut Territory (along with English and French) and the Northwest Territories (along with English, French, and several other indigenous languages). It also has legal recognition in Nunavik - a part of Quebec - where it is recognized in the Charter of the French Language as the official language of instruction for Inuit schools. It also has some recognition in Nunatsiavut - the Inuit area of Labrador. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has Inuktitut broadcasts. Inuktitut is also used in print media. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference has a commission dedicated to the preservation of Inuit and the development of a common writing system for the language.
In the U.S., Yupik is rarely taught in schools with the inevitable result of low literacy rates and language loss.
In Russia, Yupik is a dying language with only about 1,000 speakers left.

Greenland

Aleutians

Alaska

Kodiak Island

Structure

Sound System

Eskimo Child

Eskimo Man

Sound system

Vowels
Most Eskimo-Aleut languages have three vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ that can be either short or long. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning. Long vowels are usually written as aa, ii, uu.

Consonants
Eskimo-Aleut languages have 14 or 15 consonants, depending on the language. In some languages, e.g., Inupiaq, all stop consonants are voiceless, which means that Inupiaq has /p/, /t/, /k/ but not /b/, /d/, /g/. They all feature a uvular /q/.

Click here to listen to a story read in Yupik.
Click here to listen to a recording of common words in Aleut, Inupiaq, Siberian Yupik, and Yupik from Native Radio Online.

Grammar

The grammatical structures of Yupik and Inuit are very similar. All Eskimo-Aleut languages are polysynthetic, i.e., grammatical functions are represented by numerous suffixes attached to roots and stems. Linguists are attempting to postulate an internal ordering of the suffixes (see Valence and Affix Ordering in Inupiatun). This leads to very long words that are practically equivalent to whole sentences in less synthetic languages such as English. Some of the languages have hundreds of distinct suffixes, and some are said to have as many as 700.

Vocabulary

Igloo

Eskimo-Aleut languages tend not to borrow words from other languages but to create new words from native elements. For instance the equivalent of Merry Christmas in Central Yupik is Alussistuaqegcikici.

Here are some common phrases in several Eskimo-Aleut languages.

	Aleut	Central Yupik	Siberian Yupik	Inupiaq
Hello.	aang	cama-i
Good bye.	kudigada	piura	esghaghlleqamken	tautugniaqmigikpin
Thank you.	qagaasakung	quyana	igamsiqanaghhalek	quyanaq
Welcome.		quyana tailuci	quyanaghhalek tagilusi	qaimarutin
How are you?		cangacit?	natesiin?	qanuq itpich

Writing

Until recently, members of the Eskimo-Aleut family were spoken languages with no writing systems.

Yupik (Inupiaq) is written with the Latin alphabet in Alaska and with the Cyrillic alphabet in Siberia. At the beginning of the 19th century missionaries sought to develop a writing system for Yupik in order to translate the Bible. They adapted the letters of the Roman alphabet to represent the sounds of Yupik. Spelling was often inconsistent, and unfamiliar, but significant, sound contrasts were not properly identified. For example, the uvular /q/ was often not distinguished from the velar /k/, and long vowels were not distinguished from short ones. This alphabet was used to publish translations of the Bible and other religious texts in Yupik. In Siberia, Russian scholars used the Cyrillic alphabet to develop an orthography for Yupik. In the 1960s, a group of scholars and native Yupik speakers came together at the University of Alaska to devise a Yupik orthography for an English computer keyboard, without accent marks or special symbols.
Inuit (Inuktitut) was first written when explorers arrived in Alaska and began to record words in the native languages. In the 1870's, Edmund Peck, an Anglican missionary, adapted the Cree syllabary for writing Inuit. Other missionaries, and later Canadian and American government linguists, adapted the Latin alphabet to the dialects of the Mackenzie River delta, the western Arctic islands and Alaska. Today Inuit is mostly written in the Roman alphabet. However, in some parts of Canada, the Inuit syllabary is still used (see Inuit on this website).

Resources

Eskimo-Aleut Language and Culture Resources
On-line materials about Alaska native history, language, and culture
Alaska Native Languages (Map and text)
Encyclopedia of North American Indians - Eskimo (Yupik/Inupiat/Inuit)
Wikipedia - Yupik
List of Native Alaskan Tribal Entities

Click here to learn more about Inuit on this website.