Natsilingmiutut
dialect of Inuvialuktun
Natchilingmiutut (ᓇᑦᕠᓕᖕᒥᐅᑐᑦ), Netsilik , Natsilik, Nattilik, Netsilingmiut, Natsilingmiutut, Nattilingmiutut, or Nattiliŋmiutut is an Inuit language variety spoken in western Nunavut, Canada, by Netsilik Inuit.
Natchilingmiutut (ᓇᑦᕠᓕᖕᒥᐅᑐᑦ 'people from Natchilik') came from natsik 'seal' + postbase -lik 'place with something' + postbase -miut 'inhabitants of'.
Classification
There are three main dialect divisions of Natsilingmiutut dialect:
Natsilik subdialect, or Natsilik/Netsilik proper
Arviligjuaq subdialect
Illuiliq subdialect
Special letters
Natsilik dialect has the special letters: ⟨š ř ŋ⟩, used by some Nattiliŋmiut speakers. New encodings in Unicode were proposed for the Inuktitut syllabics corresponding to h and š:
𑪴 ha, 𑪰 hi, 𑪲 hu,
and 𑪺 ša, 𑪶 ši, 𑪸 šu,
and their long counterparts with a dot above
𑪵 haa, 𑪱 hii, 𑪳 huu,
and 𑪻 šaa, 𑪷 šii, 𑪹 šuu. These 12 syllabic characters for Nattilingmiutut were included in version 14.0 of the Unicode Standard on 14 September 2021, are now formally part of the Standard, and are stable to use for digital text exchange. However, updates to system level syllabics fonts and keyboards to access the characters are underway and forthcoming.
š [ʂ] – also written as ⟨sr⟩ or ⟨shr⟩, it sounds a bit like English "shr" and is distinct from both the s sound that is used in words borrowed from English and the more common h sound.
ᐅᖅ𑪸ᖅᑑᖅ Uqšuqtuuq 'Gjoa Haven'
ᒥᒃ𑪻ᓄᑦ mikšaanut 'about'
ᓯᒃ𑪶ᒃ hikšik 'ground squirrel, marmot'
ř [ɟ] (in Inuktitut syllabics ᖬ řa ᖨ ři ᖪ řu ᖭ řaa ᖩ řii ᖫ řuu) – sounds like an English (retroflex) r. It is distinct from the r sound used by other dialects, which is closer to the r [ʁ] sound made in French at the back of the throat.
ᐃᖨ iři 'eye' (cf.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Natsilingmiutut” as dialect of Inuvialuktun. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20608. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Natsilingmiutut” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.