Coast guard asks Iqaluit residents to clear off sealift beach
Removal of items like boats, snowmobiles requested until mid-November
The Canadian Coast Guard is asking Iqaluit residents to clear their boats, snowmobiles and qamutiiks from the sealift beach. (File photo by Jeff Pelletier)
The Canadian Coast Guard is asking people in Iqaluit to remove any vehicles or items they own from the sealift beach.
Specifically, any parked boats, snowmobiles and qamutiiks should removed from the area, according to a news release Wednesday from the coast guard.
“The Canadian Coast Guard’s annual Arctic operational season runs from June to mid-November,” the release said. “During this time, we ask that the beach be kept clear of personal vehicles and items.”
A lot of work to move these items, they could perhaps include an explanation….
Qamutiik is spelt without the s. Adding the s is like saying gooseses.
Technically speaking it’d be more like saying geeses but agree with your point!
No, technically adding an ‘s’ would be like saying “gooses” instead of geese. The correct Inuktitut pluralization would be “qamutiit”.
However, there is no English translation of the word “qamutiik”, so it has been adopted into English in its Inuktitut spelling. People speaking English will drop this word in the middle of an English sentence just as they have in this article. It can now also be considered a word in English, which would follow English pluralization rules, meaning “qamutiiks” would be correct when speaking English. The same way that the word “kayak” was adopted from the Inuktitut “qajaq” to be a word in English, but we say kayaks as a plural, whereas in Inuktitut the plural is “qajat”.
You can downvote all you want, I’m right.
Merriam Webster: Some English nouns of foreign origin retain the foreign plural; most of them also have a regular English -s or -es plural, which is often preferred by many writers.
Wikipedia: The general trend with loanwords is toward what is called Anglicisation or naturalisation, that is, the re-formation of the word and its inflections as normal English words. Many nouns have settled on, or acquired a modern form from the original (usually Latin). Other nouns have become Anglicised, taking on the normal “s” ending.
From Targeted Tutorials: In modern usage there is a growing tendency to anglicise the plural forms of foreign words.
Who really cares lol
Thanks for the interesting explanation. Some of us appreciate this kind of thing.
Wouldn’t the plural then be qamutiit? Just using qamutiik would be like saying please remove all the goose from the beach.
having been a coast guard employee at the white building on the beach since its opening and ended my stay in 2020, i wonder why they are asking to keep the sealift area clear. That is what the wharf and storage area was created for wasn’t it? Or maybe coast itself has cargo to be offloaded…..