PROFILE
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Total Speakers
21,500 (1991)
Usage by Country
Background
There are 21,500 speakers of Inuktitut (4000 in Western Canada, 3500 in North Alaska, and 14,000 in Eastern Canada). Inuktitut is the traditional language of the Inuit people. It has been spoken for thousands of years but has been written only in recent years. Although Inuktitut has been written for more than a hundred years, literature has developed recently through the publishing efforts of magazines and publishers in northern Canada. Different alphabets are used: in the western and central Arctic (Kitikmeot), the Roman script; in the eastern Arctic (Baffin and Keewatin regions), the syllabic script (developed in 1894 by the Reverend Edmund Peck for the Cree language and adapted for use in this region).
Received: 19990621
Posted: 19990621
Checked: 19990621
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