I’ve recently been listening to Inuktitut, Elisapie’s fantastic 2023 album of cover songs in which she sings the western pop culture music of her youth in the language of her people, the Inuit of northern Canada.
Here are some things I’ve learned about Inuktitut (the language) while listening to Inuktitut (the record).
- It’s not a language. Well, it is, but the more accurate way to describe it would be as a spectrum of dialects running from Greenland in the east to northern Alaska in the west. This is a huge area – about the same distance as from New York to London – and the dialects vary so much that folks from opposite sides would not be able to understand one another.
- If you’ve heard that old “fact” that Inuktitut has a ridiculous amount of words for “snow” – the most popular number seems to be 50 – it isn’t true. There are (at most) twelve, and some of those describe snowy conditions, not the snow itself. The 50-words-for-snow myth probably stems from the fact that…
- …It is a polysynthetic group of dialects. This means that word parts get strung together to form “word sentences” that appear very long to non-speakers. Hence, the phrase “Wish You Were Here” becomes “Qaisimalaurittuq.” My favourite example is the two-word phrase Aannialiqpasaarama iksivaassuujaluarnikumut, in which those two words do the work of eleven words in English: “I was sitting for so long that it started to hurt.” Believe me when I say I will be looking for opportunities to use those two words soon.
- Like many indigenous languages, it existed in verbal form only until the mid-1800s when European missionaries helped develop a written system of language. Which sounds uncharacteristically helpful in the context of European-Indigenous relations, until you realize the purpose of developing the written language was to give the Bible another language to be translated into.
- Today there are a bit fewer than 40 000 people in Canada who claim an Inuktitut dialect as their first language. I know the Canadian north is sparsely populated, but when the number of speakers of a language could fit in a baseball stadium, it seems to me that preservation should be a priority.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The songs on this album are far more than just covers sung in a different language. In part, they are statements on the ubiquity of pop music; the way Elisapie, growing up in the far north of Quebec, found solace in the same music that people her age were listening to in London, or Los Angeles, or Japan. But the fact that they are translated into a language that English colonialism nearly wiped out just makes it all the more powerful.
2. The instrumental – performed by an ensemble we encountered in week 398 – is haunting and fantastic.
3. In interviews, Elisapie has said that rediscovered many of the music of her youth during covid, and it unearthed emotions she didn’t know were still there. That comes through in her voice, strong but on the brink of breaking.
Recommended listening activity:
Learning some new words.