SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE

From the Mouth of A Babe

I met a ten year old boy in Qikiqtarjuaq, Nunavut who was playing with a toy, a rubber strap stretched across the Y of an antler.  He'd fit pebbles into the strap and then snap!, let them fly, targeting spots in the shallows on the shore.  Occassionally he'd hit a target and thrust his fists in the air, gleefully yelling out some celebratory word in Inuktitut.

So I approached him and, in my constant quest to learn new Inuktitut words,  asked in slow, hyper-enunciated English, "WHAT- DO-YOU-CALL-THAT-TOY?"  He raised an incredulous eyebrow at me and said, "Slingshot. What do you call it?"

Paul Simon Does Greenland

I was thumbing through Norman Hallendy's beautiful book, "Inuksuit" this evening when something struck me.  The Inuit have over 60 different words and expressions describing various types of inuksuit, the stone cairns that populate northern Canada and Greenland.  For instance, a pirujaqarvik is an inushuk marking a meat cache.  

Reading about all these different words related to inukshuit made me wonder whether there was an equivalent object or concept in English upon which we had bestowed so many terms. If there is I'll be damned if I can think of it.  But trying to come up with one reminded me of that old Paul Simon song, "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover".  Now I can't get it out of my head.

Anna Nicole Smith Goes Yup'ik

I was in Bethel, Alaska in the early 80's making a documentary about subsistence fishing.  One day I passed two teenage boys who smiled at me and said what sounded like amooq. I assumed it was a greeting and smiled back.

That evening I was invited to dinner at a local fish camp.  Nearly a dozen people squeezed around a long table in a canvas wall tent.  I was at one end, by the open flap door and a hefty elderly woman, the matriarch of the family, sat at the other.  She asked me what I thought of Bethel.  I said I thought it was great and the people were very friendly. For example.... and I recounted the story of the two boys saying amooq to me in the street. The old woman choked and a piece of salmon flew out of her mouth and landed half-way down the table.

"Amooq?",  she said.  "Amooq?"

I nodded nervously, for now everyone at the table was laughing. Not polite chuckles or smirks, but full-bellied, open-mouthed, throw back your head and cry becuase you're laughing so hard it hurts gaffawing.

The round old woman looked me straight in the eye, thrust both her hands in front of her with her palms facing inward, then clasped them to her huge bosom.

"Amooq!!," she cried and shook the six-foot long bench with her laughter.

Amooq, it appears, means big tits in Yup'ik. And the hormones of teenage boys, it appears, transcend all cultural and linquistic barriers.

How Do You Say Gangsta in Inuktitut?

Last year I ordered an Inuktitut language text book, some workbooks and language tapes from the College of the Arctic in Iqaluit.  The lessons in the text bounce back and forth between conversational Inuktitut and formal discourses on the language, its pronunciation, syllabics and so forth.

The first chapter provides a broad overview of the how the Inuktitut language was believed to have orginated in the Altai region of Siberia, migrated to North American over the Berings Straits and spread east toward Greenland, morphing into various dialects as it went.  That chapter was fascinating, but, because it was packed with technical linquistic jargon, made for difficult reading.

Fortunately, the second chapter looked more accessible. It promised several useful introductory Inuktitut phrases.  I anticipated being able to ask, "Where is the main train station?" and "What time do you have?" to my new Inuit friends.  Then I began to read useful phrases out loud to myself.

I have a gun.   Qukiutituna 

He has a gun.    Qukiutitina   

You have a gun. Qukiutitiit  

I'm sure to someone from a hunting society, sentences involving guns are useful.  I, on the other hand, live in a hunted society where, if someone greets you with a sentence involving a gun, you generally respond by handing over your wallet.

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