Inuktitut

About Inuktitut

Inuktitut is the language of the Inuit of the eastern Canadian Arctic, spoken in Nunavut, northern Quebec (Nunavik) and Labrador. About 40,000 people reported it as their first language in the 2016 Canadian census. It is an official language of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, and UNESCO classes it as vulnerable.

Inuktitut is written in Canadian syllabics, where each symbol stands for a syllable and turning the symbol changes the vowel, as well as in Latin letters. A single word can be very long because endings are added one after another to express a whole sentence.

FamilyEskaleut, Inuit
Speakersabout 40,000 (2016)
Official inNunavut and Northwest Territories (Canada)
Statusvulnerable (UNESCO)
ScriptCanadian syllabics, Latin alphabet
Codesiu (ISO 639-1), iku (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Statistics Canada, 2016 Census, via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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