Inuit
/ˈɪnjʊɪt
/ /ˈɪnʊɪt /- My background is Inupiaq Eskimo, which is the northern most tribe of Inuits in Alaska.
- The member of a very rare blood group most often found among Inuits of northern Canada.
- The story about Inuit (or Inuktitut, or Yup'ik, or more generally, Eskimo) words for snow is completely wrong.
- The infamous Eskimo snow words meme is spread by people who don't know about Inuit or any related language.
- Jacob Gronlykke's Heart Of Light is the first full-length and epic style feature film shot entirely in the Inuit language.
- I have suggested that there exists a range of signed languages, including an indigenous signed language, among the Inuit people of Nunavut.
Usage
The peoples inhabiting the regions from the central Canadian Arctic to western Greenland prefer to be called Inuit rather than Eskimo, and this term now has official status in Canada. By analogy, the term Inuit is also used as a synonym for Eskimo in general. However, this latter use, in including people from Siberia who are not Inupiaq-speakers, is, strictly speaking, not accurate. See also Eskimo (usage).
Origin
Inuit, plural of inuk 'person'.
Eskimo from late 16th century:
The traditional word for the indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia is Eskimo. The word is from Native American language Algonquian, and may have originally meant ‘people speaking a different language’. It was formerly thought that the original meaning was ‘person who eats raw meat’ and because this was seen as insulting, the word is now avoided by many. The peoples inhabiting the regions from the Canadian Arctic to western Greenland prefer to call themselves Inuit, first recorded in English in the mid 18th century and the plural of inuk ‘person’. There are comparatively few words in English from the Inuit language. Kayak, which came into English in the 18th century, is one of them, and igloo (mid 19th century) from iglu ‘house’, is the most notable other.