Building Tusaalanga has been a team effort involving a number of players.  We would like to acknowledge the contributions of:

Gwen Angulalik who wrote the Inuinnaqtun section of Tusaalanga and lent her voice to the recordings.

In the 1970s, Inuit from throughout Canada developed a standardized orthography to write all dialects.  One of the advantages of the standardized writing system is that it enables Inuktitut speakers to write words accurately according to how they are pronounced.

When standardized orthography was developed, some smaller dialects, like Nattiŋmiutut did not have much of a history as a written language.  The dialects existed as an oral language and any written texts that were read came from other communities written in different dialects.

When the standardized writing system was developed, it was decided to use the j character to make the y sound heard in the English word ‘you’.  This was done in part, to match the orthography used in Greenland, which has a long history as a written language.  In Greenland this sound is written with j.

For most communities in Nunavut, this posed few problems because, at the time, they almost always wrote in syllabics.

Don't let Inuktitut syllabics put you off trying to learn the language. They aren't nearly as complicated as they first appear.  They can easily be mastered with a couple weeks worth of practice.

Click here to see the syllabic writing system.

The first trick to learning syllabics is to understand that when we use the roman alphabet to write English and French, each letter represents an individual sound.

Unlike Greenland, Nunavut does not have a standard dialect that you can use in all communities.  So, the choice of which dialect to learn has everything to do with the community in which you will be spending most of your time.

Tusaalanga contains materials on five of Nunavut’s biggest dialects:

Uqqurmiut is the dialect spoken in southern Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island), including the capital, Iqaluit.

Tusaalanga currently has 20 lessons for those learning Inuktitut as a Second Language. Each lesson is built around a unique theme and contains a list of vocabulary (with sound), grammar lessons, a sample dialogue and a self-study assignment.

To select a lesson, click on ‘Lessons’ in the menu that appears along the top of each page.  Also in the top menu you will find links to pages that index the grammar topics, dialogues and practice exercises.