Windows learns to speak Inuktitut in crucial move for Inuit cultural survival (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Windows learns to speak Inuktitut in crucial move for Inuit cultural
survival
http://www.canada.com/technology/story.html?id=22A4CD21-CE73-430E-B999-7A613032470C

BOB WEBER
Canadian Press
Sunday, March 28, 2004

(CP) - In a move that could be central to the survival of Inuit culture,
the world's largest software company is teaching its most powerful
computer operating system to speak the ancient tongue of Arctic
hunters.

Microsoft is developing software to run its popular Windows XP system in
Inuktitut. This marks the first time the world's most popular operating
system will speak a Canadian aboriginal language.

"We're doing this to support the language," said Microsoft spokeswoman
Mina Gharbi-Hamel from Toronto.

The company is developing a so-called language interface pack, to be
available as a free download.

That means menus will drop down with Inuktitut commands. Applications
from e-mail to databases will be available in Inuktitut. Inuktitut
speakers will be able to use Windows and all its features in their own
language.

Gharbi-Hamel saw first-hand the problems English-only Windows is causing
in Nunavut when she visited government offices last February.

"I saw people translating menus on little yellow sticky notes and
putting them around their PC screen to be able to understand the
application being used," she said.

"If I'm using an application, I'd like to be able to understand my
menus."

Officials in Nunavut, where preserving Inuktitut is a powerful political
issue, welcome the language pack.

"An operating system that uses Inuktitut is incredibly important," said
Jonathan Dewar of Nunavut's Office of the Language Commissioner.

"(It) gives young people the opportunity to use Inuktitut in their
school lives and their work lives so they can be immersed in their
culture without having to put their English hat on when they leave the
house in the morning."

Relative to many other aboriginal languages, Inuktitut remains healthy.

Government surveys suggest that Inuktitut remains the mother tongue of
84 per cent of Nunavut's roughly 21,000 Inuit, with about the same
percentage speaking it at least reasonably well.

But that reassuring number drops for young people. Nearly 88 per cent of
Inuit aged 15-24 say they speak English well, compared with only 79 per
cent for Inuktitut.

And it's not hard to understand why. Only 27 per cent of Inuit report
using Inuktitut as the language of work - a figure that falls to 11 per
cent for schools.

The Windows language pack could help change that, says Chris Douglas,
Nunavut's director of official languages.

"I think it's extremely important - mainly because the government of
Nunavut is committed to making Inuktitut the language of government by
2020," he said.

But first, software developers have to come up with Inuktitut
equivalents for geekspeak such as "upload," "file format," and
"database."

Other terms already in more-or-less general use, such as "matuirli" for
"open" or "matuli" for "close," have to be standardized and accepted by
the general community.

"Some of it will be identifying words that exist and some of it will be
making new words," said Gavin Nesbitt of the Pirurvik Centre in
Iqaluit, which is running the project for Microsoft.

Creating the language interface is expected to take about a year, said
Gharbi-Hamel.

Microsoft has already written such software for local languages around
the world, from Ukrainian to Urdu to Swahili. Inuktitut will be the
first aboriginal language in Canada to receive the software, but it may
not be the last.

"We are addressing the Inuktitut language first," said Gharbi-Hamel. "It
doesn't mean we will stop there."

Dewar says the Windows language interface could be a crucial link
between the next generation of Inuktitut speakers and the tongue of
their elders.

"It's young people who are accessing modern technology, and they're the
demographic that is most at risk of losing the language," he says.
"Young people have to be able to use the language in day-to-day life."

© Copyright  2004 The Canadian Press