Natsilingmiutut


Natchilingmiutut, Netsilik, Natsilik, Nattilik, Netsilingmiut, Natsilingmiutut, Nattilingmiutut, or Nattiliŋmiutut is an Inuit language variety spoken in western Nunavut, Canada, by Netsilik Inuit.
Natchilingmiutut came from natsik 'seal' + postbase -lik 'place with something' + postbase -miut 'inhabitants of'.

Classification

  • There are three main dialect divisions of Natsilingmiutut dialect:
  • * Natsilik subdialect, or Natsilik/Netsilik proper
  • * Arviligjuaq subdialect
  • * Illuiliq subdialect

Special letters

Natsilik dialect has the special letters:, used by some Nattiliŋmiut speakers. New encodings in Unicode were proposed for the Inuktitut syllabics corresponding to h and š:
? ha, ? hi, ? hu,
and ? ša, ? ši, ? šu,
and their long counterparts with a dot above
? haa, ? hii, ? huu,
and ? šaa, ? šii, ? šuu.cf. These 12 syllabic characters for Nattilingmiutut were included in on 14 September 2021, are now formally part of the Standard, and are stable to use for digital text exchange. However, updates to system level syllabics fonts and keyboards to access the characters are underway and forthcoming.
š – also written as or, it sounds a bit like English "shr" and is distinct from both the s sound that is used in words borrowed from English and the more common h sound.
ř – sounds like an English r. It is distinct from the r sound used by other dialects, which is closer to the r sound made in French at the back of the throat.
– A small number of Inuktitut-speakers use this character instead of ng. The use of ng is deceiving because it makes use of two letters to represent what is a single sound. In syllabics this sound is represented by a single character ᖕ. Using this letter also makes the distinction between the sequence and long clearer, the first being spelled nŋ and the latter ŋŋ. In eastern varieties of Inuktitut which do not have the sequence, long is spelled nng rather than ngng. When the letter ŋ is not used, the distinction may be made by spelling n'ng and nng.