(Reproduced with kind permission by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami)
When compared with other indigenous populations in the world, Inuit of the eastern Arctic enjoy one of the highest percentages of native-language speakers, often cited at 90% or higher. Some federal government studies largely attribute this high retention to the syllabic writing system widely in use, especially when compared to aboriginal populations that have adapted Roman-style writing systems. How this situation came about is fascinating, especially when the history of Inuktitut syllabics is put into the perspective of the evolution of written language in general. From this historical perspective, we can give a quick evolution of the syllabic writing system used by Inuit and how it is actually helping to preserve the Inuktitut language by keeping pace with advances in technology.
Writing systems date back to around 1800 B.C. when an unknown Minoan trader on the island of Crete punched his manifest on a clay disk, most likely with some bronze tools. The Phaistos Disk and its script, known as Linear-A, is the earliest known example that we have of a mechanical writing system. It took nearly 3500 years for the next major advance in mechanical writing with Gutenberg's printing press, and the resulting birth of typography. Now inexpensive personal computers (like the one you are using to view this page) have the capacity for thousands of fonts, and we take for granted typographic capabilities that put to shame the best phototypesetting equipment of a scant 30 years ago.
Now imagine compressing this 4000-year evolution into less than 150 years, and you can contain the history of the written language of the Inuit people. Not only was the syllabic writing system invented in latter part of the 19th century, it was not even Inuit in origin. Surprised?
As with other indigenous peoples in North America, the Inuit culture has an oral tradition that is probably as old as western civilization. In modern times it is hard to imagine our culture without written records, but the complex grammar and word-structures of the Inuktitut language has managed to hand down a rich history and deep culture from generation to generation, virtually intact.
There are many aspects to the introduction of written language to the Inuit, but the goal of literacy was in fact religiously motivated. James Evans, a Wesleyan (Methodist) missionary stationed on the western shore of Hudson's Bay in the mid 1800's, wanted to give the local Ojibwe population the ability to read the Bible in their own language. After giving up on a Latin-based orthography, he created a syllabic script system based in part on Pitman shorthand. The original system had only nine symbols that could be drawn in four different orientations to represent different vowel sounds sufficient for the Ojibwe language. Evans met with resistance with his system not from the local Ojibwe people, but from his own superiors, who apparently forbade him to use it.
Eventually Evans was relocated to a Cree settlement, where he learned the local language and began work adapting his syllabic script to a translation of the New Testament under the direction of Rev. John Hordon. His project was wildly successful, and soon the entire Cree community was able to read and write in syllabics. Of course this story is not without controversy, and several Cree legends treat the writing system as originally Cree (or Blackfoot). There may be some truth to the notion that Evans actually "borrowed" his system from the Cree themselves. One legend has the writing system given to both a western and eastern elder simultaneously as a gift from the Great Spirit, and another has a single Blackfoot family shunned by the community out of distrust with their ability to write.
While it is not certain exactly how Inuit adopted (or rather, adapted) Evans' syllabary, the proximity of the two cultures on the James Bay coast and the success of missionary activity along both sides of Hudson's Bay surely played a key role. The most accurate account is that it was adapted and introduced by rev. Edmund Peck at Little Whale River in 1876.
Inuit are without a doubt the most practical and adaptable people in the world, and especially in the region of northern Quebec known as Nunavik, adopted the syllabic writing system with a vengeance. The use of the syllabic writing system spread up to the (eastern) Hudson's Bay coast to the Ungava Bay coast, and continued to the Northwest Territories (now Nunavut).
It is interesting to note that Inuit populations outside the eastern Arctic region do not use the syllabic writing system. Inuit in (what is now) N.W.T., Labrador Coast and in Alaska use Roman orthography, as well as the Inuit of Greenland (Greenlandic). Siberian Inuit use the Cyrillic script to write Inuktitut. Sadly, the Inuktitut language has fallen into considerable decline where syllabics are not used (with the lone exception of Greenland).
The syllabic writing system was meant to be mechanically printed right from the onset, and Evans actually produced crude letterpress forms with the scant materials he had available. Letterpress type and variants remained virtually the only method of mechanically reproducing syllabics until the 1950's where stencil photo-etching and offset lithography eventually took over.
The 1960's and 70's saw the birth of "office automation", and the Inuktitut language was not far behind. IBM, in collaboration with Inuit in what is now the territory of Nunavut, developed an Inuktitut typeface "golf ball" for their innovative Selectric typewriter. However space limitations did not allow for all of the syllabic characters, and an entire column (the AI-PAI-TAI column) was dropped completely from the syllabary. The result was that two characters were needed to represent sounds that previously only required one.
Barely a decade had passed, and personal computers began to make serious inroads, particularly in the processing of text. But early personal computers were not well adapted to typography and it wasn't until the Apple Macintosh in 1984 and its ability to graphically display typefaces, that the next big revolution in syllabics would take place. With the laser printer and the PostScript language introduced in 1987, the revolution in "desktop publishing" was born. The first Inuktitut syllabic fonts appeared right at this time, namely Umiujaq from Nunavut, followed by WNunavik from Nunavik.
The 1990s saw an explosion of Inuktitut fonts, notably the project co-produced between the Baffin School Board and Apple Computer. Nunatsiaq News, the "official" newspaper of the North, also contributed with the newspaper-friendly Nunacom font. In Nunavik, the original WN Nunavik was refined with two major revisions.
From a typographic perspective, many problems persisted with the use of Inuktitut syllabics. The most acute problem was the incompatibility between various syllabic fonts. A document created with one font could only be viewed by that font, as font designers had no external reference in which code points were assigned. Spacing was a big problem, and the original design of the syllabary did not lend itself well to modern typesetting standards for legibility and readability, especially on low-resolution computer screens. In brief, syllabic type design did not have the luxury of time to evolve, as had Roman orthography.
The late 1990's saw phenomenal growth in the Internet, and the difficulties in using non-Roman scripts on computers became a significant problem. This was due to the extremely limited number of characters that could be represented on computers and the incompatible standards that were implemented by computer manufacturers themselves. This problem in encoding was addressed with a new system called Unicode, and a major undertaking to include all of the world's known languages was underway. Unicode replaces the old 7-bit (128 character slots) ASCII and 8-bit (256 character slots) ANSI and vendor encodings with a 16-bit (over 65,000 character slots) code space. However 65,000 characters was still not enough to contain all of the world's languages and script systems, and upcoming versions of Unicode will have multiple "planes" of 65,000 characters each.
In Canada, the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabic Encoding Committee (CASEC) was formed to include not only Inuktitut syllabics but also all aboriginal syllabic users, both current and historical. The result made its appearance officially in Unicode 3.0 as Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (UCAS) in March 2000. Even before UCAS was officially adopted, fonts were already being prepared, notably by the territorial government of Nunavut, with NunacomU.
With the rather jumpstarted transformation of computer encoding to Unicode, there has been a corresponding lag in software that can actually use 16-bit character strings. While computer and operating system vendors have been quick to adapt Unicode technology, the bulk of application software still depends on 8-bit strings to function. This means that the computer you are using to view this page can probably use Unicode fonts but only in a limited number of supported languages. Decisions to offer language support for software applications is more often than not driven by market economics, and some groups are just too small, or in the case of Inuktitut, miniscule. By conservative estimates, it may take five to ten years before the majority of software applications are Unicode-savvy.
Unicode and the Internet
have actually
driven resurgence
in the evolution
of Inuktitut
syllabics. A major
project initiated by the Nunavik
region has seen the development
of a new generation of fonts
that addresses many of the problems
technology imposed
on Inuktitut syllabics in the
past. The AiPaiNunavik font , released
in March
of 2001, saw not
only the reintroduction of the
AI PAI TAI column,
but the introduction of the first
true syllabic italics and a format
highly
optimized for
both low resolution
screen
display
and high
resolution typesetting.
The font is also the first syllabic
design that rejects not
only
the word-recognition evolution
of western typography, but the poorly
adapted
designs of previous Inuktitut
syllabic fonts as well. With
character shapes designed for
the near limitless word
constructions of
both the spoken
and written forms
of the Inuktitut language, the
AiPaiNunavik font is a serious attempt to make
a clean break from
the burden
of western
cultural traditions
so painfully
obvious in other designs, dating
right back to Evans himself.
The AiPaiNunavik
font has
been
a huge success
with nearly
universal adoption in the Nunavik
region, and continues to be developed
with new releases forthcoming.
Other significant Inuktitut syllabic projects are underway, notably the Pigiarniq font, the Evans revival project initiated by the territorial government of Nunavut, and the AiPai Typing Tutor software project initiated by the Kativik School Board.
Even with this flurry of activity, the rush to capitalize on the vast capabilities of the Internet is beginning to show that the Inuktitut language on computers is still very limited. Standardization of many aspects of syllabics are needed, including sorting methods, text processing tools as well as transcoders for the vast majority of computers that can't use Unicode and for Inuit in other regions that do not read syllabics.
The future does indeed look promising, but danger is always lurking around the corner. As can be shown by history, the evolution of technology is a force that has its own agenda, often at the expense of minority cultures and languages. With this knowledge, however the forces of technology can actually be used to reinforce Inuit language and culture. The trick now is not in a knee-jerk response to advancing technology, but actually initiating technology projects based on cultural needs.
www.omniglot.com/writing/cree.htm
www.creeculture.ca/e/language/syllabics.html
www.nlc-bnc.ca/nord/h16-7301-e.html#Inuktitut Syllabics: the Origins
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