IQALUIT, Nunavut - In a move expected to transform daily life for everyone in Nunavut, territorial politicians have voted unanimously to include the Inuit language on all signs and for all services.
The Inuit Language Protection Act states that the 30,000 residents in the sprawling northern territory have a right to use their mother tongue and that action is needed to keep it from dying out.
The new rules governing Inuit languages -- including Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun -- come into effect July 1 and will be expanded over the next few years. They will be enforced by a languages commissioner.
"The Inuit language is at the heart of our culture and identity," Culture Minister Louis Tapardjuk said in a news release.
"We have taken strong action to ensure that the Inuit language is and will remain at the centre of work, education and daily life in Nunavut."
People working with the government, customers in shops, restaurants and other businesses will have access to the Inuit language.
Municipal services will be available in the Inuit language within four years. Inuit language instruction will be compulsory for students in kindergarten to Grade 3 as of next July and for all other grades by 2019.
It is to be the language of work in the public service as of Sept. 18, 2011.
Leaders hope the law will stop trends that show the use of Inuktitut is strong but threatened. Recent Statistics Canada figures found that while 91 per cent of Inuit could speak the language in 2006, that figure was down three percentage points from a decade earlier.
The census also reported that 64 per cent of Inuit in Nunavut said they spoke Inuktitut at home, a precipitous drop of 10 percentage points from 1996.
"We're going to try to keep the language alive. It's getting lost," said Rhoda Ungalaq, who teaches Inuit languages to government staffers at Nunavut Arctic College.
She said the language is being squeezed out in bigger communities such as Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay and Iqaluit, and only kept alive by elders.
"If you go to playgrounds and schools in smaller communities, you'll hear children playing in Inuktitut, but if you go to playgrounds in Iqaluit, you will hear only English and one word of Inuktitut here and there," she said from Iqaluit.
"This legislation is going to be a help."
The new law is companion legislation to the Official Languages Act, passed this spring by the legislature, which puts the Inuit language on par with English and French as the region's official languages.
Together, the new laws are the culmination of eight years of work that began with a legislative committee and included roundtables, standing committees, written submissions, public meetings and public hearings.
Those who need to learn the language will find that Inuktitut words are knit together like Lego blocks - unlike English and other European languages where the words are strung together like beads in a certain order to gain meaning.
For example, cite authors Alexina Kublu and Mick Mallon on the website www.nunavut.com, the sentence "I never said I wanted to go to Paris" would be translated as "Pariliarumaniralauqsimanngittunga."
But Ungalaq said Inuktitut is no more difficult than any other language.
"It doesn't matter if you want to learn to speak in Chinese or Japanese or Inuktitut, if your really want to speak another language anyone can do that, but it takes practice."
Passage of the language law capped a busy week for the legislature, which also saw Premier Paul Okalik dissolve the government for a territorial election Oct. 27.
The session included a new midwifery profession act.
