The singular of Inuit

[Frederick W. Schueler]

HJJACOBSON at AOL.COM wrote:

>  Canadians decided out of courtesy to refer to certain northern people as Intuits instead of Eskimos, which a Canadian told me means "people eaters." But the Intuits in Alaska decided to be courteous let those of us in the lower 48 continue to call them Eskimos.

* Inuit is the collective, the singular is Inuk; announcers on the CBC
are routinely chastised by e-mail for using "Inuits" as the plural.
There are also liguistic divides within the Eskimoan languages in
Alaska, which made it more politic to use the foriegn (Canadian
Algonquian 'eater of raw meat') name rather than choosing a local native
name to import into US English.

fred.
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           Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
Frederick W. Schueler, Aleta Karstad, Jennifer Helene Schueler
      RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
     (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca
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