I was out last night with a group of Northerners some of whom I'd not seen for 9 years, I could hardly believe it, as we took up where we may have left off a decade, almost, before.
Talk from them was kids, new ones, some there, nice to see what pops out from particular unions, eh & old Arctic adventures.
A favourite: me with hypothermia in a qamutik wrapped in a caribou hide and a now prominent federal minister holding me as I shivered chit-chatting to me about Gjoa and its inuit as we raced back towards Iqaluit.
I survived, it seems, and it has made amongst some who know me an interesting Arctic story - the idiot who didn't dress properly and almost clownishly died on a sunny Saturday's tubing.
Some, for me, disturbing aspects came up, kids from Gjoa don't necessarily speak Inuktitut (ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ) fluently. I was afraid to ask if they read and wrote syllabics. Jeez. Syllabics each sign a sound I could say. It was my way into the language. I knew people I thought were inuit because of the way they spoke English to me who've told me over beers at the Legion, Geoffrey I'm like you a qallunaat. In these strange cases, English was the second language with Inuktitut being the first - kids of teachers in remote communities. For the lack of a better way of describing their English it was words I knew but with an Inuktitut cadence, very confusing
I spoke with one kid who said her family found it easier to speak English to her. I've heard that one before. The French mother of my son would say it, thankfully he didn't lose his real mother's tongue and has added since German and Mandarin. The latter he took up as a kid of 10 through China's sort of Goethe Institute program at a local high school. Strange kid now an interesting adult who still let's me chit-chat with him. Nice, I think.
