Verb roots in Inuktut describe actions or states of being. The verb ending tells us who is performing the action.
| takujunga | I see. |
In the above word, taku- describes the action of seeing and the verb ending –junga describes who is seeing.
By using different verb endings we can talk about different people doing the same action:
| nirijunga | I am eating. |
| nirijutit | You are eating. |
| nirijuq | He / she is eating. |
| nirijuguk | The two of us are eating. |
| nirijugut | We (3+) eating. |
| nirijusik | The two of you are eating. |
| nirijusi | You (3+) are eating. |
| nirijuuk | The two of them are eating. |
| nirijut | They (3+) are eating. |
The verb endings highlighted above in blue can be added to any root that ends in a vowel. Remember Inuktut has three vowels i, u and a.
If the root ends in any other letter, we change the j that begins each of these verb endings to t:
| uqalimaaqtunga | I am reading. |
| sinittuq | He/she is sleeping. |