Eskimo Translation Services
History
Early forms of the Inuit language were spoken by the Thule people, who overran the Dorset (culture), which had previously occupied Arctic America, at the beginning of the second millennium. By 1300, the Inuit and their language had reached western Greenland, and finally east Greenland roughly at the same time the Viking colony in southern Greenland disappeared. It is generally believed that it was during this centuries-long eastwards migration that the Inuit language became distinct from the Yupik languages spoken in Western Alaska and Chukotka.
Until 1902, a possible enclave of Dorset people or Sadlermiut (in modern Inuktitut spelling Sallirmiut) existed on Southampton Island. Almost nothing is known about their language, but the few eyewitness accounts tell of them speaking a "strange dialect". This suggests that they also spoke an Eskimo-Aleut language, but one quite distinct from the forms spoken in Canada today.
The language of the Inuit is an Eskimo-Aleut language. It is fairly closely related to the Yupik languages, and more remotely to the Aleut language. These cousin languages are all spoken in Western Alaska and Eastern Chukotka, Russia. It is not discernibly related to other North American or northwest Asian indigenous languages, although some have proposed that it is related to Uralic languages such as Finnish and Saami in the proposed Uralo-Siberian grouping, or even Indo-European languages as part of the hypothetical Nostratic superphylum, and there are those who consider it a Paleo-Siberian language, although that is more a geographic than a linguistic grouping.
The Inuit language is traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador. It is also spoken in far eastern Russia, particularly the Diomede Islands, but is severely endangered in Russia today and is spoken only in a few villages on the Chukchi Peninsula. The Inuit live primarily in three countries: Greenland (a constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark), Canada (specifically the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador, the Nunavik region of Quebec, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories), and the United States (specifically the state of Alaska).
Eskimo-Speaking Countries
Russia
Canada
Denmark
United States
Information provided by http://omniglot.com
Apex is your single source for your Eskimo to English or English to Eskimo translation needs.
Contact us today for a free quote, or simply call us at 1-800-634-4880.
