Inuit Language - Phonology and Phonetics

Phonology and Phonetics

Eastern Canadian Inuit language variants have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short).

Consonants are arranged with five places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular; and three manners of articulation: voiceless plosives, voiced continuants, and nasals, as well as two additional sounds — voiceless fricatives. The Alaskan dialects have an additional manner of articulation, the retroflex, which was present in proto-Inuit language. Retroflexes have disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects. In Natsilingmiutut, the voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/ derives from a former retroflex.

Almost all Inuit language variants have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. The only exceptions are at the extreme edges of the Inuit world: parts of Greenland, and in western Alaska.