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September 17, 2018 5:28 PM

Anaana's Tent, a Canadian children's show that broadcasts in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit peoples of eastern Canadian Arctic, has just added an English version to its programming that teaches Inuktitut words throughout. This, one of the executive producers, Neil Christopher, told Huffington Post, is "for those Inuit and others whose first language isn't Inuktitut but want to learn". Can't access Canadian TV? You can still learn a few things!

The Inuktitut version of the website is a fun place for anyone to start learning some basics (warning(?): beaver speaking Inuktitut in autoloading audio). There you can:

- Learn how to count to ten
- Learn how to write and say the names of different animals
- Hear some throat singing
- Read stories and listen to songs (both Inuit traditional, and Inuktitut versions of English traditionals).

and generally enjoy the wholesome goodness of Rita Claire, her muppet pals, and special guests.

Topping it all off, the show is a product of Taqqut Productions, an Inuit-owned company, whose producers wanted to help stem the tide of linguistic and cultural erasure in their communities.

posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane (12 comments total)

Are the numbers expressed as multiples?
posted by 1adam12 at 6:16 PM on September 17, 2018

I'm heading over to see if there's a Muppet Tuunbaq in play...
posted by BigBrooklyn at 6:17 PM on September 17, 2018

That’s a lemming, not a beaver.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:56 PM on September 17, 2018

This is so awesome.
posted by frimble at 1:10 AM on September 18, 2018

Are the numbers expressed as multiples?

If I have it right: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (5+2), (5+3), (10-1), 10, (10+1), (10+2), (10+3), (15-1), 15, (15+1), (15+2), (15+3), (20-1), 20
posted by frimble at 1:16 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

That’s a lemming, not a beaver.

I did think its voice was a bit high-pitched for a beaver.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:39 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

You know it's going to be a weird day when one of the first sentences you read is "Warning: Beaver speaking Inuktitut."
posted by mike_honcho at 5:38 AM on September 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Inuktitut, like other Inuit languages, uses a base-20 counting system. I don't know if they also use the Inupiaq numerals, but here's a Wikipedia link with some explanation.

frimble has it right - there sub-bases at 5, 10, and 15, and other numbers above 6 are represented as offsets from those bases.

Also this series is delightful and legit has some of the best singing I've heard in a kids' show.
posted by xthlc at 6:27 AM on September 18, 2018

It's a very cool language - I just wish the character sets were a little better supported by (at least one) of the tech industry giants...

For example, while both Inuktitut Syllabics and Latin are available as Windows language options (at least in 10), it is simply not a supported option with; SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics, etc... At least there are downloadable fonts, that you can stream/embed and then use within your webpages, manually if your platform doesn't automagically support a "language pack".

And... it "irks me to no end", that "Klingon" is an option, rather than a real-world language... (Sure... must have been fun for the tech people who worked on that, but...)
posted by jkaczor at 10:38 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

That’s nothing new. In the 1960s, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics lost a whole vowel family from the alphabet just to fit on an IBM Selectric typewriter. It’s been added back in Nunavik, but not Nunavut.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:16 AM on September 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

omg i love this. i was watching something similar for nahuatl the other day but that link is lost forever in my chrome history as i cannot for the life of me recall the website's name. it did not, however, have a cute little chubby lemming.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:48 AM on September 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

We have Berry Magic, a tale of Anaana bringing different types of berries to the tundra. I'll have to show these videos to little purr!
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 6:35 PM on September 18, 2018