Inuk woman creates language book to showcase fading Inuktitut dialect

Inuk woman creates language book to showcase fading Inuktitut dialect

The Rigolet Inuktitut dialect doesn't have many fluent speakers remaining, but a new resource hopes to help.

A young Labrador woman has created a Inuktitut dialect book in hopes of preserving the unique pronunciations of her hometown before they are lost.

Ocean Pottle-Shiwak, 18, of Rigolet took part this year in annual summer literacy programming meant to combat the "summer slide," in which students forget some of what they learned at school the previous year.

However, Pottle-Shiwak took it a step further and created her own book, Ilinniasonguvutit: Inuktitut, which captures the local Rigolet Inuktitut dialect.

"The Rigolet dialect kind of died with my great-grandfather, so I kind of wanted to bring that back," Pottle-Shiwak said. "He was a really good mentor for me.… I always looked up to him."

Pottle-Shiwak said he was always out on the land and made sure she and her family knew their Inuit culture. But while going through the resources her Inuktitut teacher had, she noticed there were other dictionaries and handbooks available, but none with the Rigolet dialect.

"There are a lot of different dialects in Inuktitut," Pottle-Shiwak said. "We can understand if we were to talk to each other but a lot of the differences in the dialects is very minor spelling and pronunciation."

Read the article here.