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Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 3:28 pm
by Smaug the Dragon
So, I've been mulling over this for a few days and in my desperation I turn to my ToO friends, on the off-chance that someone here is an expert on this language and can help.

I'm doing a project for one of my classes (Computational Morphology) that requires creating a Finite-State Transducer to represent the morphological inflections of a language other than English. That's like; making a program that recognizes words from the language, and knows how to inflect them depending on the grammatical category. So, Smaug being weird, she decided to try something completely new.

I picked Inuktitut as my language, having read that it's a language with tons of morphemes. The thing is, it's also a not-very-common language, and I can't find much about it online. I know that Inuktitut is a dialect of Inuit spoken in Northern Canada, and that it has it's own, like, sub-dialects or whatever. Thing is, I don't know which dialect to pick, and where to find lexicons and grammars and whatnot.

I have to decide by Friday (coming) which language to try to represent, and prepare a short proposal (about 1000 words) on the morphological details of the language, and what parts of it I hope to implement in my FST. Er.. can anyone please help?

I will repay you somehow, make you a thank-you card - and credit you in my project too! :) I'm hoping for advice on whether I should give up on this language and pick one that I can actually pronounce the name of, or to stick with it (preferably with some links to useful resources :p ).

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 8:26 pm
by Catspaw
I'm guessing that you've found this site already if you've done some browsing for online resources?

I wish that I could help! I hope that things work out for you, Smaug. Considering your location and the lack of online resources, it does seem like you might need to find something with more readily available info, but you never know if somebody's hidden talent might save the day!

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 10:27 pm
by ~JCGJ~
OMW. My aunt actually studied linguistics intensively, and Inuktitut was one of her favorites... Unfortunately, my aunt kind of... disapeared a couple years ago, and no one has heard from her... Last I knew, she was in the Hymalayas, researching some "obscure local dialect" of Hindi, or something like that.
We haven't tried calling her for at least a year, so, who knows, I might be able to get ahold of her, and direct her your way... I'll let you know.

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 2:51 pm
by darcie
Maybe ique knows about it? She's from Alaska and really loves languages.

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 6:47 am
by Anna><>
I know we learned a tiny bit about that in elementary school, but I really don't remember much at all.

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 3:49 pm
by ~JCGJ~
Nope. Unfortunately, she still won't pick up the phone. I left her a voice-message and I sent her an email... We'll see if she responds.

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 11:12 pm
by E II
Inquest hasn't been on since september

Re: Anyone know anything about Inuktitut?

Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2013 4:54 am
by Smaug the Dragon
Hey everyone, I appreciate your replies. :) After much internet trawling, I decided to alter my language choice a tad, and went for the slightly-more-spoken West Greenlandic, otherwise known as Kalaallisut. If you are the world's leading expert on Kalaallisut, now is your time to shine! ;)

Well, my proposal is in now, but I'm still doing the project; this does require some knowledge of the language, so I am still very happy to chat with anyone who has information. ^_^ Hehe, that sounds so dodge.

JCGC - your aunt sounds amazing. I would seriously love to disappear off into the wild world to study some of the amazing dialects that exist off the beaten track. When you do hear from her again, tell her she has a fan.

So the adventure continues! I have discovered a book in our college library on West Greenlandic. Perhaps this will hold all the answers!