Preserving language — in print

MIRIAM HILL

The first book Zacharias Kunuk ever read was a story written in English — See Spot Run. Though it may seem strange for a unilingual Inuk on Baffin Island in the 1960s to learn to read in English, for Kunuk there was no other option.

“That’s how it was,” he says, “but it is time to correct it.”

However, even today — almost 40 years later — there is a dearth of books written in Inuktitut. Perhaps this is understandable. Inuktitut was until comparatively recently an oral culture.

“There isn’t a tradition of reading,” says linguist Mick Mallon. “The people who are accustomed to reading, many of them obviously have had an English education — and the books they do have would be mostly written in English.”

Noel McDermott, an instructor with the Nunavut Teacher Education Program at Arctic College in Iqaluit, teaches future teachers to write original stories in Inuktitut, ranging from biographies to fantasy stories. The aim is to create teaching materials that can be used to enhance Inuktitut language programs in the schools where the teachers will eventually work.

“The language has been written for literally just barely 100 years,” McDermott says. “The very small numbers, the isolation of the camps, it didn’t lend itself to a written kind of culture. It’s only been in the last 20 years that a standard orthography has been decided on.”

McDermott says the Inuit struggle to promote language and preserve it in written form has many parallels around the world, including one close to his own heart — Irish culture.

“The Irish language was associated with nationalism, in other words with identity — with identity of place, with identity related to history — so the language has that importance in kind of fixing and helping to define the character and identity of a people,” he says.

“There’s no doubt about it that the same is true for the language of Inuktitut — and it’s probably more in need of written expression because the language is under siege so much from English.”

McDermott says there has not yet been any sort of bloom in creative writing in Inuktitut, unless you look to Greenland, which has had an established orthography for a few hundred years.

“Here we are literally at the infancy of an orthography.”

Arctic College instructors and students have written about 285 books, according to Louise Joanas, the co-ordinator for NTEP’s community based programs. Joanas is also the author of a young adult Inuktitut novel called Niviarsiap Tammarninga (Young Lady’s Mistake). She says it’s a somewhat moralistic story about a young teenager who gets pregnant.

“It’s a young girl who’s experiencing first love and in the end has gotten pregnant,” she says. “In the end, she graduated from high school regardless because she really wanted to finish school.” Joanas says Inuktitut literature is an essential part of recording and reflecting changes in society. And it’s important to offer youth materials that will hold their interest.

Stories collected and written in English by anthropologists are not as powerful in Inuit society as materials written by Inuit, as meaning is difficult to transfer between language and culture, she says “I’m sure the literature would be different if it had been written by an Inuk, exactly the way an Inuk was telling it,” Joanas says.

However, if the idea of written literature is expanded to include film and songwriting, then Inuit society has a wealth of materials.

Mallon says songwriting is probably the richest portion of the modern arts in Inuktitut, citing local would-be bands and international stars such as Susan Aglukark. “That’s far more lively and spontaneous than the writing of books.”

Kunuk says it’s important for films, too, to be made in Inuktitut because it gives pride to those who speak the language. Mallon agrees, stating that far more homes have TVs than a collection of books.

“When you look at the video stores, it’s all English or Chinese stuff dubbed — and here is something that all the Inuit are going to be able to follow without looking at the subtitles. It’s exciting,” Mallon says. “It can only have a positive effect.”

While a national or home-language literature is part of a well-rounded language, he says, speaking the language at home is the most essential part of preserving Inuktitut.

“To be brutally pragmatic about it, at this stage it is a matter of survival,” he says. “If the parents aren’t speaking it, the kids are not. If the kids are not responding, then the whole question of literature doesn’t matter.”