Curious Travels Of A Language Geek

              The Inuit tribe has used many natural resources in assisting them to provide food. As they hunt, many of their game don’t just provide food, yet more than that. The Inuit hunters have used sealskin and blubber, from seals they have caught, were used to make clothing, materials for boats, tents, harpoon lines, and fuel for heat and light. Their boats, harpoons lines, clothing, help them gather even more food.

The Inuit have a Bladder Feast, which is a act of respect for the seals they catch during the year (Institution and Smithsonian). Lots of the Inuit culture is about them giving respect to the animals they kill and they use every part of that animal. The Inuit would hunt animals like bison, whales, fish, and arctic bears. The Inuit people have mastered the skills of survival in the arctic region. They use many tools in order to hunt. They use spears for catching whales and they hunt in groups on land. Over the years they have improved their ways of hunting and building their

English 111 has made a positive impact on me as a student. I have learned a lot in English considering the short amount of time I have spent in the class. English has always been one of my strong points, but I have always looked to find ways to improve my English skills. During the class I learned several new techniques and skills to improve myself as a student. I am glad I had a smart professor to help guide me along the way.

The film “The Linguists” follows linguists Gregory Anderson and David Harrison on their journey to learn about and document endangered languages in Bolivia, India, Arizona, and Siberia. Through their quest, they are able to interact with some of the few remaining speakers of languages that are near death and they manage to make an impact on how these communities view their heritage language. Focusing on the moribund languages of Siberia and Arizona, it becomes evident that speakers of the heritage language feel a love for the language and the culture it represents, but went through periods of oppression and embarrassment for being speakers of a minority language that ultimately shaped their attitudes on the language.

Leslie Marmon Silko's essay, "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective," and Amy Tan's essay, "Mother Tongue," share similarities and differences. Both authors discuss the challenge of language, each from their own perspective.

However, The Netsilik Eskimo was a unique read in the sense that Balicki did much more than just describe their evolution. He achieved his purpose by focusing primarily on the ways of the Netsilik before the introduction of the firearms, imported clothing, or steel tools. Although it could seem outdated to some readers, it was informative in the area of the lifestyle of the Netsilik that the author was focusing on. If a reader wants to learn more about the recent lifestyle of the Netsilik within the last 50 years, this book does not touch on those subjects. Nevertheless, it was fascinating specifically to me because I was looking to learn about how a group of people could survive in such rigid winter conditions for such a long period. They had very little interaction with white people compared to other tribal groups, so the subject is less touched upon in our education system today. Today, when the early education system in our nation focuses on Native North American tribes, the Netsilik is not included because they were not affected by the famous bills and laws passed by the United States

The people of Inuit, Yup’ik, Unangan, and other Native Americans Indians have lived in the harshest environment on Earth from Siberia, across Alaska and Canada, and to the East of Greenland along the coast of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. From Labrador to the interior of Alaska the Athapaskan, Cree, Innu, and other Native’s people lived in the subarctic region of the land. These people had the ability to depend on their years of knowledge of the sky, ice, ocean, land, and animal behaviors in order to survive. Living in the area that was vast and dealing with seasonal dynamic extremes these Native people of the Artic and Subarctic had a honorable endurance for an millennia of exchanged goods, ceremonies, and shared feasts with neighboring goods that has help them throughout the years.

The Canadian Inuit were a domestic, tribal, egalitarian society in the 19th century. And some cultural changes occurred; making the Inuit adapt and become more aware of other resources they could get hold of, for gathering and hunting for food. In the 19th Century, the Europeans discovered the Inuit culture and this provided new resources for the Inuit to gain an easier way to gather and hunt for food. But because of the European influence, the Inuit’s culture changed to adapt with European Individuals living in their land, and European resources that had been made access to them. By this cultural change in the 19th century there was “an increased diversity in the social structure and material culture of the Labrador Inuit society” (Auger, 1993:27). The Labrador Inuit was a significant Inuit Society to have an ethnographical research made to understand a little bit more to; how the Inuit was affected and how the food process was changed. It will also be discussed the significant ideas and techniques that the Inuit used to gather and hunt for resources.

The Inuit developed a way of life well-suited to their Arctic environment, based on fishing; hunting seals, whales, and walruses in the ocean; and hunting caribou, polar bears, and other game on land. They lived in tents or travelled in skin-covered boats called kayaks and umiaks in summer, and stayed in

The Inuit are very spiritual people and they do not believe in a lot of the same things we do. They believe in something called Animism, all living and nonliving things have a spirit. When someone or something dies they believe that things spirit goes to the spiritual world. They only people powerful enough to talk or communicate with these spirits are religious leaders, Shamans or “Angakoks”. The way these religious leader speak with them is through dances or charms. They wear masks and clothes of an animal because they believe it helps them to communicate with them better. Not all spirits are good ones, when the weather was bad or there was an illness going around they believed it to be a displeased spirit, but the Inuit used guidelines to try to make the spirit happy. There was five rules that need to be followed in order to please the spirits, 1) women are not allowed to sew caribou skins on the inside of there igloo on sea ice in the winter. 2) Inuit can not eat sea mammal and land mammal at the same meal. 3) A knife used to kill whales had to wrapped in sealskin, not caribou skin. 4) After killing a seal melted snow had to dripped into its mouth to quench the spirit's thirst. 5) The Inuit saved the bladder of the hunted because they believed that’s where the spirit was found inside. One of the most important spirits was Sedna, The Goddess of the Sea. She provided them with food from the sea, which made the Inuit most happy.

Not only did the Inuit people of the Artic adapt biologically, they did so culturally as well. They adapted culturally in three main ways via clothing, houses and living in small groups. The Inuit were clothing that would best suit their environment. The type of clothing worn was intended to keep in heat in addition to not expose any skin. They were clothes that weren’t loose and fit around the wrists as well as the ankles

Language plays an important role in communication by bringing people together and enriching their relationships. Language can also alienate those who do not speak it properly, or at all, from those who do. The essays, Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan, best known for her book, The Joy Luck Club, and Se Habla Espanol, by Tanya Barrientos, delve into the many powers that language holds. These essays reflect how by not speaking a language in proper form and by not speaking a language at all, affects the lives of the subjects of the stories.

Most believe that Native American live deep within temperate forests, but one tribe lives within a much colder and frigid climate. This tribe is known as the Inuits. Inuit means “The Real People” (Santella 5). A group of Inuits traveled to the Americas from Asia, and they went towards the north pole. They eventually settled in the Arctic regions and began to thrive (7). They are widely dispersed throughout the Siberian, Alaskan, Canadian, and Greenland regions (6). The Inuits have an interesting history, lifestyle, and religion.

In the world today, there are more and more multicultural people who can speak different languages; and they need to choose different tongues to correspond to the immediate community they belong. Language makes people remember their own cultures and contribute to their own identity. In “Mother Tongue,” a short story written by Amy Tan; she strongly narrates the stories about her different experiences and life comprehensions based on varying types of English she speaks throughout life. Wandering on two different languages; Amy discovers the importance and power of language: “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth” (Tan 38). As human beings, language is the tool that contains the mighty powers; it forcefully affects people’s lives, personality, and lifestyles. Moreover, language is the “bridge” of communication between people. However, for Amy, the views on mother’s language are changing from the sense of shame into pride; as she is feeling the effects that two different types of English are giving to her as well as their respective symbols in her mind.

Ferguson (1971) refers to pidgins and creoles as simplified speech used to communicate with people who are considered unable to understand normal speech, such as babies or foreigners. One of the essential points that should be clarified in this context is the link between the term pidgins. This linguistic variety is used in the contact between two speech communities from two different linguistic backgrounds (Al-Azraqi 2010; Al-Moaily, 2008).Bresnan and Roberts (2008:272) state that pidgins ‘develop as auxiliary languages and thus lack native communities, at least initially’.