I Want to Learn Syllabics By Mark Kalluak

I know I don’t stand alone when I say I never learned syllabics in school... like many others, I learned it from the back of prayer books and Bibles, and I believe people who claim learning syllabics is one of the simplest systems there is. When I was sent to the hospital at the age of four, I thought I was being transported to another world and my parents would never find me. Perhaps because of my desire to communicate with my parents, I had one object in mind – to learn to write. Maybe that is why I learned to write syllabics so early.1

Excerpt from Kenn Harper, Writing in Inuktitut, Inuktitut, September 1983

Mark Kalluak has been active in language development for many years. His work with the Inuit Cultural Institute in Arviat and recently with the Department of Education has helped preserve valuable stories and knowledge.

Reading and Writing in the Iglu Excerpt from an Interview with Rachel Uyarasuk

There were no pencils. I’d never seen a pencil. I’d never seen anything to write on. When the Bibles were brought, our parents would work at learning how to read. That’s when our parents started reading to us children, and we got the desire to learn to write. We tried to be better than our fellow-children. We would practice writing on the frost in winter.

For instance ikuma, or mannik, because there were only two or three letters in these words.

Sometimes when we were playing outside, we would go where there was fresh- fallen snow and write on it, because there was nothing to write on and there were no pencils. We would learn to write the ‘ai ii uu aa’. We learned that from our parents. We would be told that if we learned these, then we would know how to read, and we would learn how to write. So we would practice with words on the snow. Whenever we were traveling, and an iglu was built, there would be fresh snow. There would be a lot of writing on it.

Then we started to have little short pencils. They were very precious, and we were told never to lose them when we started to write with these pencils. Also, whenever there was anything that was store-bought, there would be paper containers such as sugar and tea packets. If there was any part that was blank we would write on it, because we had never seen any writing pads. That’s what we did.