Canadian Conservative government pro-language

Yesterday, the Conservative Party of Canada won a majority government for the first time in its eight years of existence.

James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, announced today that funding for the CBC will be maintained at the current level or increased. He said, “[The CBC] is essential for respect for all of our official languages and all of the regions of the country — broadcasting in aboriginal languages in the North.”

The CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a public television and radio broadcaster. Among its services is CBC North, which operates in the Canadian Arctic. Their programs include broadcasts in:

• Cree (cre)
• Dene Suline or Chipewyan (chp)
• Dogrib (dgr)
• Gwich’in (gwi)
• Inuktitut (iku)
• Inuvialuktun (ikt)
• North Slavey (scs) and South Slavey (xsl)

CBC Radio 3 provides free music, with a category for Aboriginal artists, though a casual glance at a few pages revealed only music in English. The CBC also has a bilingual program titled “Legends,” recording traditional oral stories.

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Inuktun Language in Peril from Global Warming

Spoken in northwest Greenland, Inuktun is a dialect of Inuktitut (kal) considered to have remained more isolated than other dialects. The Inuktitut language is a part of the Inuit family and Ethnologue reports that Inuktitut dialects are borderline separate langauges.

According to a nanoSapiens article, Cambridge researcher Stephen Pax Leonard is on his way to spend a year with the Inughuit people to study the Inuktun language. According to the article, if global warming trends continue, the Inughuit will have to move in another decade or so, which may lead to Inuktun going silent.