It's snowing, windy, and freezing cold here in the frozen wastes of… my backyard.
So, hey, what better time to talk about the Inuktitut writing system?
Now, if you're planning on going to Greenland sometime soon (I have no idea why you would
want to go at THIS time of the year), then this video isn't going to be much help, because,
in Greenlandic, they use the Latin script.
However, in the nearby Canadian territory of Nunavut, they do use the Inuktitut writing
system.
I'd describe more about the history, but Tom Scott already made a great video about that
right here []. So, instead, I'll teach you how to read/write the script!
The first thing to mention is that this is not an alphabet, where to write a consonant,
then a vowel, and then another consonant, etc., but an abugida.
The way this one works is you have certain characters for the consonants.
To write vowels in the Inuktitut script, you simply orientate the consonant in one of three
ways, as Inuit languages tend to have three vowels: "A" (pointed to the left), "I"
(pointed up) and "U" (pointed to the right), as in this case, with the silent letter, and
this case for the n letter: "NA", "NI", "NU".
Simple!
Also, if you don't want a vowel following the consonant, like in the end of a syllable,
just put a smaller version of the consonant in the "A" placement.
The consonants are: [silent], "P", "T", "K", "G", "M", "N", "S",
"L", "J", "V", "R", "Q", "NG", "NNG", and "Ł".
Now, the Inuktitut writing system, or "Qaniujaaqpait" is, of course, an abugida (I already mentioned
that) this means that vowels aren't their own full-fledged letters, they're modifications
to the consonants.
Either way, it completely depends on consonants.
One interesting thing about Qaniujaaqpait is that if you read/write Hangul, this will
be familiar to you: there are no diphthongs allowed.
Inuktitut gets away with this by simply not having diphthongs.
What this could mean is that, if you're a
science channel on YouTube, and you want to write your name out, it would be fine if your
name is KhAnubis, or Vsauce, or Veritasium, but not so much if you're Crash Course.
Another thing to know is that some vowels are longer than others, like "AA", instead
of "A".
Inuktitut speakers write this with a dot atop the characters, so this character for "QA"
becomes "QAA", or you can get 5 letters from 2 lengthened sounds with "NNGUU"!
It's of course very beautiful out here, but I'm going back inside!
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