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The Inuit languages are a closely related group of Native American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador. The related Yupik languages are spoken in western and southern Alaska and in the far east of Russia, particularly on the Diomede Islands, but are severely endangered in Russia today and spoken only in a few villages on the Chukchi Peninsula. The Inuit live primarily in three countries: Greenland, Canada (specifically in the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador, the Nunavik region of Quebec, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories), and the United States (specifically the coast of Alaska). The total population of Inuit speaking their traditional languages is difficult to assess with precision, since most counts rely on self-reported census data that may not accurately reflect usage or competence. Greenland census estimates place the number of speakers of varieties of Inuit there at roughly 50,000, while Canadian estimates are at roughly 35,000. These two countries count the bulk of speakers of Inuit language variants, although about 7,500 Alaskans〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Indigenous Languages Spoken in the United States (by Language) )〕 speak varieties of Inuit out of a population of over 13,000 Inuit. The Inuit languages have a few hundred speakers in Russia. In addition, an estimated 7,000 Greenlandic Inuit live in European Denmark, the largest group outside of Greenland, Canada and Alaska. Thus, the global population of speakers of varieties of Inuit is on the order of nearly 100,000 people. ==Nomenclature== The traditional language of the Inuit is a system of closely interrelated dialects that are not readily comprehensible from one end of the Inuit world to the other, and some people do not think of it as a single language but rather as a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking the Inuit language into specific member languages, since it forms a continuum of close dialects. Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely its neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level. As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for its own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating a great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it. In Greenland the official form of Inuit language, and the official language of the state, is called ''Kalaallisut''. In other languages, it is often called ''Greenlandic'' or some cognate term. The Eskimo languages of Alaska are called ''Inupiatun'', but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them ''Qawiaraq'', or for some dialects, ''Bering Straits Inupiatun''. In Canada, the word ''Inuktitut'' is routinely used to refer to all Canadian variants of the Inuit traditional language, and it is under that name that it is recognised as one of the official languages of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. However, one of the variants of western Nunavut is called ''Inuinnaqtun'' to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while the variants of the Northwest Territories are sometimes called ''Inuvialuktun'' and have in the past sometimes been called ''Inuktun''. In those dialects, the name is sometimes rendered as ''Inuktitun'' to reflect dialectal differences in pronunciation. The Inuit language of Quebec is called ''Inuttitut'' by its speakers, and often by other people, but this is a minor variation in pronunciation. In Labrador, the language is called ''Inuttut'' or, often in official documents, by the more descriptive name ''Labradorimiutut''. Furthermore, Canadians – both Inuit and non-Inuit – sometimes use the word ''Inuktitut'' to refer to ''all'' of the Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland. The phrase ''"Inuit language"'' is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all the local variants; or it is used as a descriptive term in publications where readers can't necessarily be expected to know the locally used words. Although many people refer to the Inuit language as ''Eskimo language'', this is a broad term that also includes Yupik, and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See the article on ''Eskimo'' for more information on this word. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Inuit languages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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