Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:08:55.486Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Towards a Canadian Eskimo orthography and literature (I)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Raymond C. Gagné
Raymond C. Gagné*
Affiliation:
Department of Northern Affairs
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Many different systems of writing the Eskimo language are in use in Canada today. Several alphabetic systems based roman letters affect only a minority of Eskimos. The syllabic system consisting of such symbols as small triangles, right and acute angles, and semicircles is written by the great majority. Those who know a given alphabetic system usually know the syllabary as well, except those who were born and brought up in the Mackenzie River area and Labrador. In Canada, at present, there is no standard orthography for the Eskimo language as there is in Greenland, for example. The syllabary which serves some 75 per cent of the Canadian Eskimo population, by virtue of this fact, comes closest to being a standard system of writing. It should be noted that the syllabary is not known in Greenland.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Spring 1962 , pp. 95 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Ostermann, H., editor, Introduction to “Alaskan Eskimo Words,” Rep. of 5th Thule Exp. 1921–24, (1941), p. 9 Google Scholar.

2 Thalbitzer, W., Uehlenbeck’s Eskimo-Indo-European Hypothesis (Copenhagen: Munskgaard, 1945), p. 89 Google Scholar.

3 Weinreich, U., Is a structural dialectology possible? Word 10 (1954), pp. 395–396 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, footnote 13. (Václav Polák.)

4 Hockett, C. F., A course in modern linguistics (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 328 Google Scholar.

5 Hickerson, H., Turner, G. D., and Hickerson, N. P., “Testing procedures for estimating transfer of information among Iroquois dialects and languages,” IJAL 18 (1952), pp. 1–2 Google Scholar.

6 Voegelin, C. F. and Harris, Z. S., “Methods for determining intelligibility among dialects of natural languages,” Proc. of the Amer. Phil. Soc. 95 (1951), pp. 327–328 Google Scholar.

7 Voegelin, C. F., “Phonemicizing for dialect study,” Lang. 32 (1956), p. 118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Gagné, R. C., A phonemic analysis of an eastern Hudson Bay dialect with special reference to orthographic unification (University of Montreal, M.A. thesis, 1958), 153 pages.Google Scholar

9 Martinet, A., Economie des changements phonétiques (Berne: Francke, 1955), pp. 54–59 Google Scholar.

10 Id., “Function, structure, and sound change,” Word 8 (1952), p. 9 Google Scholar.