Inuit Sign Language
[4][5] Of the estimated 155 deaf residents of Nunavut in 2000, around 47 were thought to use IUR, while the rest use American Sign Language (ASL) due to schooling.
As it is a highly endangered and relatively hidden language, it has no protection under the federal or territorial governments of Canada.
However, IUR exists alongside ASL interpretation within the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut as of 2008.
[3] Recently, there has been increased interest in the documentation of the language which would be done through the Nunavut Council for People with Disabilities and the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC).
Similarly, Yugtun-speaking Yup'ik and Unangam Tunuu-speaking Aleuts refer to sign language as Unaatekun Qalarcaraq and Chuguusal / Chaasal, respectively.
However, as more children were born deaf in the area, the language was revived and adapted to their needs.
In the territory of Nunavut, for example, the incidence of hereditary deafness is six times that of southern Canada.
However, due to the sparseness of communities and the relative youth of the field of research, there is little understanding of who uses the language where.
[5] In fact, deafness within Inuit society holds less stigma than it does within its southern neighbours which leads to a wider acceptance and adoption of IUR.
[5] As there exists no formal educational opportunities using IUR, parents are increasingly opting to send their children south to schools where ASL is the primary language of instruction or English–ASL interpreted curriculum; Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) and/or French education appears to not hold precedence.
Increasingly, there is support from within and outside the linguistic community to expand local programmes and to document IUR,[8] especially after R. v. Suwarak, 1999,[6][10] which saw an Inuk man put to trial where no interpreter was able to be provided as none existed.
[3] As academic research into IUR is a new field, there is limited information related to its varieties.
However, it is known that there is dialectal variation of the language across at least Nunavut, as to be expected from separated linguistic communities.
It is said that Inuit have spoken IUR, or at least a variation therein, for generations across much of their territories, however no current research confirms those rumours.
[13] As of 2015, there have been few linguistic studies on Inuit Sign Language, notably done by Schuit (2012) wherein they looked primarily at verb agreement and classifier use.
Schuit makes note that at this early stage of research, they cannot say the absolute word order of the language; they plan to pursue further studies in negation and morphological typology later.
One type of sign is a monomorphemic sign-usually consisting of one significant point of articulation and one or other movement.
Its handling classifiers appear on transitive verbs and mark the direct object, such as PICK–UP:CLegg ('pick up an egg') or MOVEup:CLbox ('move a box').
Entity classifiers have so far been identified in the semantic class of vehicles, animals, two-legged beings and flying birds, such as in: TWOTHREETHREE-WEEKSWARMMOVE3a:CLbirdsGOOSESHOOT++3aTWO THREE THREE-WEEKS WARM MOVE3a:CLbirds GOOSE SHOOT++3a'In two or three weeks, when it’s warmer, the geese will come flying in, and I'll shoot them (out of the air).
