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 eat |
| nirijutit | you eat |
| nirijuq | he / she eats |
| nirijuguk | the two of us eat |
| nirijugut | we (3+) eat |
| nirijusik | you two eat |
| nirijusi | you (3+) eat |
| nirijuuk | the two of them eat |
| nirijut | they (3+) eat |
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 | siniktuq |
| I read. | he / she sleeps |