SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Polar Eskimo: some initial thoughts and phenomenological observations

Polar Eskimo or Inuktun is the language of 700 Inuit hunters of north-west Greenland. As a dialect without a standardised written norm, but related to Canadian Inuktitut and yet spoken in Greenland, it is a linguistic anomaly whose aberrant phonology ensures that it is not understood elsewhere in the country. With the absence of a written culture in its own language, Polar Eskimo has historically been the vehicle for a rich tradition of storytelling and a source of knowledge for a rapidly changing Arctic climate. Polar Eskimo is a language of glottal stops, sighs and groans where words can be 50 letters long. This lecture gives a brief introduction to the language and my phenomenological observations with regards to the 'experience of language' in a society where gesture is as important as words, where speech trumps writing and where sitting in a hunters' hut on the sea ice in a gale, the sounds of the storyteller's voice merge with the sounds of nature.