Jan26

naliqqaittuq.

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snow day yesterday at last

 a really good day to stay home from school

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Inuit in Canada’s North have their own unique names for the months of the year. Aseena Mablick, an announcer for CBC Nunavut’s Inuktitut-language radio program Tausunni, has been collecting information on the names of the months in Inuktitut for years.

Mablick says one of the reasons she’s sharing this now is to “keep the language.”The names in Inuktitut are interconnected with the environment and wildlife surrounding the Inuit in Canada’s North.”It’s a truthful and honest calendar for people who are living over here, everyday, like us,” she says. “We just follow mother nature’s ways for naming the calendar.”

Each region in Nunavut has its own unique names for the calendar, and Mablick shared with us just two of the regions she’s looked into — Baffin region (also known as the Qikiqtaaluk Region) and Nunavik (northern Quebec).

January In Nunavik, January is “Naliqqaittuq”, literally meaning “nobody’s able to compete with it,” says Mablick. “It has to do with the coldest weather in that month.”

January is called “Qaummagiaq” in the Baffin region. It means “bright day coming back.”

meanwhile in ann arbor…

Continuing a six-decade tradition,
hundreds participated in a huge snowball fight
at the University of Michigan Diag,
embracing the Michigan snowstorm.

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credits: cbc news (north), aseena mablick, deadline detroit

68 responses »

  8. The Inuit people and their culture seem, in a way, similar to our Amish folks, in that they go their own way and do their own thing as much as possible. You mentioned igloos and that the word does not define a dome-shaped structure. Now you have me wondering if their homes are still built from snow and ice? And the snowball fight is an amazing tradition that bonds students! I want to watch (from a warm place close by, of course!)!

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  9. We fiddle with the environment too much … intentionally or unintentionally. Some things can’t be conquered without causing new problems. Some cultures just accept it and live within its bounds.
    I could accept a snow day if it looked like your beautiful picture … but just one. 😉

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  15. I know the Inuit have many words just for snow and I love the two you shared. They poetically represent this time of year!
    I just cam in from shovelling a good almost foot of it. It is not snowball snow (thank goodness) but was still rather heavy.

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  19. ‘Nobody is able to compete with it’ sounds like a message to stay in doors. Or better yet be a south bound snowbird. And actually right where we are at seems to be a sweet spot the last couple of winters. Most of the storms are missing us. And I hope I have not jinxed us by saying that.

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  24. I noticed this morning that the sun is a little higher in the sky and last night I realized that the two months of REAL winter here are January and February. I was thinking of a “real” calendar with those two marked as such. There would be November/December “Ultimate Perfection, Jan/Feb “Frost in the Air”, March/April “Cranes!!”, May/June. “Still Wearing a Sweatshirt!” July and August would be called “Hungry Fucking Deer Flies,” Sept/Oct would be “Deer Flies gone/yellow trees”

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  26. Thanks for sharing this. I love languages and find it fascinating how differently we sometimes express things. In English for example you “Fall in Love” in German “verliebt man sich”. It’s a much more technical expression in German. Have a great day!

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