February 3, 2012

For Christmas, my expedition partner Noah Nochasak of Nain gave me two wonderful gifts: a harpoon head that he had carved himself -- just what we need here in the Rockies, for those errant whales that some tourists believe populate Lake Minnewanka -- and an Inuktitut-English dictionary of the Northern Labrador dialect. The book was even more special because it was co-edited by my late friend, Auggie Andersen, who gave me valuable advice when I was planning my first expedition.

To some writers, including myself, dictionaries are the best possible gifts. They are sources of information, inspiration, humor. I have spent thousands of hours reading dictionaries like some people read novels. On my desk, I have a pocket dictionary that I sometimes refer to when I'm looking for a word while writing. ("How do I say, 'shorn' without using 'shorn'?") But my real treasures are a pair of unabridged 13-pound dictionaries, Webster's and Funk & Wagnall's. When I see writers with abridged dictionaries on their desks, I conclude that they are using words rather than in love with them.

Studying other languages renews one's love of dictionaries, because every dictionary, and every language, has its style. When I was studying Russian, I acquired A Phrase and Sentence Dictionary of Spoken Russian, put out by the U.S. War Department during WWII. It had the usual phrases pertinent to the era -- "A military airplane may be armed with rockets"; "There is no room in this lifeboat" -- but it also gave real insight into the Russian psyche. Example phrases were usually morose. Aunt: "My aunt died last week." Soup: "There is a fly in my soup." The Russian glass of life was always half-empty, never half-full. This became even more apparent when I acquired another dictionary in the same series, this time of the Spanish language. The Spanish example phrases for the same words were sunny and optimistic.

My new Inuktitut dictionary has a refreshing quirkiness that increases the language's intrigue. Forget about the many Inuktitut words for snow -- that's a myth. (See The Horizontal Everest) But consider these gems:

mutjomattingilaugunguna -- stop shoving his head into the soft snow

nangiatsaniannagu -- don't make him jittery when we come to the spot where it is dangerous

nillasejuk -- he is waiting for the warm spring air to cool down before traveling any further

ivuttaujiagivait -- he accidentally lost his catch to a moving ice floe that crushed them

kemmalingngujuk -- a person who is tired of chewing on sealskin to soften it

Kakkinagiva -- after eating mussels, he finds it difficult to eat because the shellfish caused his throat to tingle

KilluaKatsik -- when a dog or human has swallowed something indigestible and it is trailing from its anus

Kiminniajuk -- a person's limbs become numb because the clothes he's wearing are too tight