1 Tunngasugit

The dog sleeps under the tree.

In Inuktut, the basic units of meaning are roots and affixes.

Roots involve basic vocabulary and always appear at the beginning of words in Inuktut. Here are some examples:

niri-	to eat
aullaq-	to depart; leave town
tupiq	tent

Affixes are attached to the end of roots and other affixes. They can never begin a word. Here are three simple affixes:

-tunga	I
-tutit	you
-tuq	she / he / it

 

Roots and affixes cannot be used on their own.  Instead words are built in Inuktut by attaching one or more affixes to a root.  Remember that in most cases, the root is the base of the word and appears at the beginning.

If we add different affixes to the same root, we get different meanings:

aullaqtunga	I depart.
aullaqtutit	You depart.
aullaqtuq	He / she departs.

 

And if we throw in other affixes, we can change the meaning again.  -lauq- is an affix that indicates that something happened in the past:

aullalauqtunga	I departed.
aullalauqtutit	You departed.
aullalauqtuq	He / she departed.

In Inuktut very long words can be put together using many affixes.  We end up with single words that would take an entire sentence to say in English:

qangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga I’ll have to go to the airport.

 

In Inuktut, we indicate who is performing an action by using an affix that appears (usually) at the very end of a verb:

takujunga

I see.

 

In the above word, taku- describes the action of seeing and the affix –junga describes who is seeing.
By using different affixes, we can talk about different people doing the same action: