Scientist to live amongst Inuits to document threatened language

An ambitious anthropologist from England is determined to stay with a small community of Inuits in Greenland for a year in an attempt to save their disappearing language and culture.

Stephen Pax Leonard, who will live with the Inughuit in north-west Greenland, is enthusiastic about recording the communitiy's language and culture, before they are forced to move south as climate change will soon threaten their lifestyle within 15 years.

Although the Inughuits speak Danish and Greenlandic as well, Inuktun is still their main language.

According to Leonard, the Inughuits speak Inuktun, a "pure" Inuit dialect. Their language is descended through story-telling and thus Leonard wants to record their conversations to prevent their language from becoming extinct. This is because when they are forced by political and climactic reasons to move south, they would be assimilated to different cultures, thereby causing their unique language and culture to disappear.

The Inughuits are hunter-gatherers, who are the most northernmost people. As they do not have a cash economy, the men still hunt for food such as walruses, seals and other mammals to sustain their lifes. They still use dog sleds during the winter and kayaks in the summer.

Leonard, who is anthropological linguist at Cambridge University, is convinced that his attempt to save the community's language is necessary as the climate change is definitely bring about a major linguistic challenge. Their language is still preserved until now due to their story-telling tradition and also due to their geographical isolation. He is taking solid-state audio recorders to record the Inughuit's conversations to produce an "ethnography" of speaking".

It is Leonard's hope that his effort would provide a permanent record that shows how the Inghuit's language and culture are interconnected.