
The Inuit agree on a common writing system - askl
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/10/03/the-inuit-agree-on-a-common-writing-system
======
jjkaczor
Wow... It's very rare that a HN post intersects so closely with my current
work... I say, as I look out the window into downtown Iqaluit. Interestingly
enough newer versions of Windows allows users to easily add support for both
Inuktitut Syllabic and Latin languages, I have yet to see a physical keyboard.

What irks me the most, is the lack of server-side language support for cloud
offerings, on-premise Enterprise products, etc. If Microsoft can support
Klingon for translation purposes, then just maybe they could support Inuktitut
a little better.

~~~
aerovistae
Holy fuck I had to look that one up on the map....you are OUT there. I
realized when I saw the map that I was just reading about that place the other
day! That's incredible. I honestly never thought in my whole life I would ever
meet someone who had been there, even on the internet. I would be super
interested to hear ANYTHING you have to share about that place. What it's like
getting there, being there, what you're doing there, the people, the life,
anything.

~~~
jjkaczor
It's a very interesting place - the people are welcoming and friendly (well
YMMV, but if you are willing to listen and understand the local challenges and
culture - then you will have a good time).

Food security is a challenge for people who do live here, due to the general
high-costs. Interesting fact - at one point in time, Amazon Prime shipping to
Iqaluit was 2-3 times the national average for Canada (and that probably
increased with their purchase of Whole Foods - items, which may be most
expensive through Amazon for the rest of Canada can often be cheaper than
purchased 'locally') - [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iqaluit-amazon-
prime-1....](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iqaluit-amazon-
prime-1.4193665)

The landscape is beautiful (personally, I am a sucker for mountainous/rocky
terrain and ocean) - it is above the Arctic circle, so - no trees! The weather
is currently really nice - a little rainy today, but no snow - the big freeze
hasn't happened yet. Myself, I find that even during winter months, the cold
is not unworkable - as technically the local climate is considered a polar
desert zone, so the reduced humidity helps.

Myself, I don't live here - but I do come up every 2-3 months, primarily
working on Microsoft-stack products and technologies.

Most often, one gets here from a flight from Ottawa - almost 3-hours in
duration. (And hey... you still get a hot meal in-flight!) However, it is
possible that you might fly in from another territory or community - during
the summer there are some flights to/from Greenland.

All data/communications connectivity currently occurs over satellite
connections (your flight lands, your phone connects to a local "LTE" network,
but that is then bridged back over satellite automatically - no extra charges
;-)) - this can be challenging during weather events, heavy rain, snow or fog
can often interfere.

There are plans for undersea fiber, but that will take a few years - the
upcoming newer LEO satellite networks will bridge the gap until that arrives.

~~~
jcranmer
Do you have any recommendations for people who want to visit it?

One of the reasons I have a curiosity about learning Inuktitut was its
different writing system, so the Inuit officially moving away from it saddens
me.

~~~
arcticbull
Not OP but: Stay at the Airbnb, there’s one run by the only parole officer in
Nunavut. Check out each of the restaurants and the Nunavut brewing company ^_^
check out Sylvia Grinnel Park, walk down to Apex and the old HBC outpost. I
hear prices went up at the museum, but there’s a fantastic local art scene,
and Janet Armstrong is a great local artist. You can always hang out at the
restaurant at the Frobisher and get better deals directly from the artists.

Watch out for airfares, they’re crazy high, $1200-1600 usually round trip on
Canadian North out of Ottawa, but they partner with Aeroplan and with enough
advance planning Aeroplan only charges 7500mi + $30 each way, and you can
transfer from AMEX Membership Rewards. [1]

[1] [https://travelupdate.boardingarea.com/first-air-and-
canadian...](https://travelupdate.boardingarea.com/first-air-and-canadian-
north-merger-and-redeeming-aeroplan/)

~~~
jjkaczor
Thanks for replying (OP here - I have been "heads down"), yes - have had a
friend stay at the Airbnb, he loved it. (Better internet than at the 2 hotels)

Oh - and the art is amazing - and yes, when at the Frobisher, local artists
will always be showing their work for you to buy directly, but there are
stores as well.

Also - make sure you tour the Legislative Assembly (when open) -
[https://www.assembly.nu.ca/faq](https://www.assembly.nu.ca/faq)

Come in the Winter if you like snow - come in July/August if you want to get
out on the water or like rocky hiking.

Get some coffee at the Black Heart Cafe -
[https://www.facebook.com/BlackHeartCafe/](https://www.facebook.com/BlackHeartCafe/)

There are about 4-5 good restaurants, 2 attached to the current hotels, but I
also recommend "Yummy Shawarma" and "Big Racks BBQ".

Something interesting for the HN crowd - a new hotel is going up, built from
modular shipping-container sized units -
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iqaluit-hotel-rooms-
bui...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iqaluit-hotel-rooms-built-in-
shanghai-china-1.5212876)

------
Pxtl
I had no idea that Inuktitut had more than one writing system. For a language
with such a small population, that's a surprising and serious pain-point.

The Inuit are one of the few indigenous groups in Canada that managed to keep
their culture relatively intact - most other groups have lost much of it
through centuries of colonial rule and ultimately with residential schools,
while the Inuit were comparatively neglected - both in positive and negative
terms.

Good to hear steps being taken to protect the language.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>The Inuit are one of the few indigenous groups in Canada that managed to keep
their culture relatively intact

Because they aren't wealthy enough to be worth a lot as taxable income and
didn't control an area with dense/lucrative enough natural resources to be
worth subjugating. Without money or something that could be converted to money
there was no reason for the city slickers to go out of their way to
impose/integrate (word choice depends on which side you're on) their culture.
You can see this pattern more or less worldwide. On every continent there are
people who live in the remote parts, nominally under some government but are
mostly left to do their own thing because they have little to take and take
little from the government. If you want to be left alone it's best to be
someone not worth bothering.

I agree that it's nice to see them become more of a defined culture (language
and all) since being obviously delineated from the rest will help them
maintain their own autonomy and culture.

~~~
jcranmer
There is quite a lot of natural resources in the Far North--North Slope oil
comes to mind. However, the environment is so inhospitable to getting
resources out of the area, that it has for the most part been economically
infeasible to exploit them, at least until the latter half of the 20th
century.

------
mFixman
I can't help but being sad for the official end of the Inuktitut syllabic: it
was such a unique system or writing, and it seemed to fit Inuit languages
well.

Unicode can handle a zillion characters, and I don't remember having problems
with missing fonts in any of my devices for at least half a decade. If the
problem is people talking in English on their cellphones because of lack of
input support, couldn't the government of Nunavut work in making iOS/Android
keyboards with a good syllabic input method?

~~~
tasogare
I feel a bit sad too. I looked at it last week, it was a really nicely
designed syllabic alphabet and well suited to the phonology of the language. I
planned to learn it this week for the fun.

I don’t think developing a keyboard for it is too difficult. Actually I could
try to do it myself. The problem is probably more about making users install
it when it’s not preinstalled on the device and thus requires downloading an
application. Heck, even languages such as Chinese or Japanese requires a
(first party) download on Android. I found iOS handles better multilingual
input and is less confusing to get started with new keyboards.

~~~
knolax
> I don’t think developing a keyboard for it is too difficult.

I've made IBus input methods for conlangs before and it's literally as simple
as making a plaintext table of physical keys and corresponding characters. I
can't imagine it'd be any more difficult on IOS or Android. Despite this I
can't find any Inuktitut keyboards on the Play Store.

~~~
tasogare
Well it’s depends. On desktop OS plain text file method has limitations, for
example on macOS it may not work if the name is too long and it ignores
leading 0 for conversion which is super annoying. Then there are third party
middleware like Open Vanilla which are more customizable and finally there is
the solution of using native frameworks which is hellish.

On mobile OS, at least on iOS, developing a keyboard means also creating the
layout keyboard and managing its state, so it’s a bit more work than a single
mapping text file.

> I can’t find any Inuktitut keyboards on the play Store

I found my next side project haha. I need one for another app I planned to do.

~~~
yorwba
> I found my next side project haha. I need one for another app I planned to
> do.

You might want to base it on
[https://anysoftkeyboard.github.io/](https://anysoftkeyboard.github.io/)

------
__rvnykk
Interesting, I thought they had already agreed on a standard a few years ago

In any case, Syllabics are a very interesting writing system. I'm planning on
doing an in-depth video about them at some point, but Tom Scott's introduction
is great [1].

There are some major advantages to using Syllabics.

Consider that the languages that use them are polysynthetic, meaning that the
'words' are quite large and encompass a lot of information, and that they
mostly use a Consonant-Vowel syllable structure that is perfect for a
syllabary, where one character represents both a consonant and its vowel [2],
or an abugida, where the consonant is the important part of the character, and
the vowel markings are secondary [3]. An alphabet creates large, unruly words.
Qaliujaaqpait and Ojibwe also double their vowels to lengthen them, making
romanized text very long.

Look at this Ojibwe word for coffee: "makade-mashkiikiiwaaboo", in syllabics,
it's the much less unruly "ᒪᑲᑌᒪᔥᑮᑮᐙᐴ".

And Syllabics themselves are amazing, there are different shapes for the
consonants, and their rotation determines the vowel sound [4]. Just awesome,
and very easy to learn

However, sadly, there are many disadvantages to the awesome system. For one,
roman letters are everywhere, there's good software support, there's always
going to be a need to know them as the new generation learns English and
French. Not to mention rotation-based characters are no good for, say, someone
with dyslexia. I'm not shocked at this decision, it was the right call.

First Nations and Inuit languages need standardization, and more importantly,
as much literature as possible, to compete. That's hard to do when everyone is
writing in a different way.

I'm writing syllabic converter software that should hopefully be more accurate
than the current ones online today, if you're interested in helping or
learning about it, feel free to send me an email

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW4hI_METac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW4hI_METac)
2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary)
3:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida)
4:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems#Ojibwe_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_writing_systems#Ojibwe_syllabics)

~~~
mc32
Hangul is an interesting hybrid with aspects of syllabary and alphabet and
seems to work pretty well. Also lends itself well to typesetting. It’s also
nice and compact.

------
mmmrk
Two observations without much substance:

1\. I love the logo of the ITK. So joyful! (See [https://www.itk.ca/itk-board-
of-directors-adopts-inuktut-qal...](https://www.itk.ca/itk-board-of-directors-
adopts-inuktut-qaliujaaqpait-as-unified-orthography-for-inuktut/))

2\. The comments section of [https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/national-
inuit-org-app...](https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/national-inuit-org-
approves-standard-roman-orthography-for-all-dialects/) and
[https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/inuit-qaliujaaqpait-
th...](https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/inuit-qaliujaaqpait-the-product-
of-history-and-determination/) contains considerable toxicity. I was expecting
general upvoting among a people here but I guess I expected too much from a
comments section of a newspaper.

------
WalterBright
Being an programmer, I wonder if a simpler writing system could be devised
that doesn't rely on special symbols. For example, one could dedicate Q as an
escape character, and what follows could specify sounds that don't exist in
English. Then, one could write the language using conventional ASCII.

~~~
jcranmer
Inuit languages are relatively restricted in their phonology. It's a three
vowel system (6 if you count long/short separately), fourteen consonants (2 of
which are unfamiliar to Germanic/Romance speakers), allows gemination of
consonants (i.e., consonants can be short or long), and mostly follows a C?VC?
syllable scheme. The only unfamiliar consonant without a general
transliteration to ASCII text is the /ɬ/ sound; q is already familiar to
people who transliterate the Arabic /q/, and ng is common for /ŋ/.

------
tehabe
I wonder how far apart Inuktitut and Greenlandic are, could Greenlandic use
the syllabic script w/o changing much?

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emiliovesprini
Unpaywalled text: [https://outline.com/486wJ9](https://outline.com/486wJ9)

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/486wJ9](https://outline.com/486wJ9)

------
phy6
Yes, but tabs or spaces?

