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Invertebrate

Invertebrates is an umbrella term describing animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a spine or backbone), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordate subphylum Vertebrata, i.e. vertebrates. Well-known phyla of invertebrates include arthropods, mollusks, annelids, echinoderms, flatworms, cnidarians, and sponges.

The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxa have a greater number and diversity of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 10 μm (0.0004 in) Myxozoans to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid.

Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are actually sister chordate subphyla to Vertebrata, being more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the term "invertebrates" rather polyphyletic, so the term has little meaning in taxonomy.

Etymology
The word "invertebrate" comes from the Latin word vertebra, which means a joint in general, and sometimes specifically a joint from the spinal column of a vertebrate. The jointed aspect of vertebra is derived from the concept of turning, expressed in the root verto or vorto, to turn. The prefix in- means "not" or "without".

Taxonomic significance
The term invertebrates is not always precise among non-biologists since it does not accurately describe a taxon in the same way that Arthropoda, Vertebrata or Manidae do. Each of these terms describes a valid taxon, phylum, subphylum or family. "Invertebrata" is a term of convenience, not a taxon; it has very little circumscriptional significance except within the Chordata. The Vertebrata as a subphylum comprises such a small proportion of the Metazoa that to speak of the kingdom Animalia in terms of "Vertebrata" and "Invertebrata" has limited practicality. In the more formal taxonomy of Animalia other attributes that logically should precede the presence or absence of the vertebral column in constructing a cladogram, for example, the presence of a notochord. That would at least circumscribe the Chordata. However, even the notochord would be a less fundamental criterion than aspects of embryological development and symmetry or perhaps bauplan.

Despite this, the concept of invertebrates as a taxon of animals has persisted for over a century among the laity, and within the zoological community and in its literature it remains in use as a term of convenience for animals that are not members of the Vertebrata. The following text reflects earlier scientific understanding of the term and of those animals which have constituted it. According to this understanding, invertebrates do not possess a skeleton of bone, either internal or external. They include hugely varied body plans. Many have fluid-filled, hydrostatic skeletons, like jellyfish or worms. Others have hard exoskeletons, outer shells like those of insects and crustaceans. The most familiar invertebrates include the Protozoa, Porifera, Coelenterata, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Echinodermata, Mollusca and Arthropoda. Arthropoda include insects, crustaceans and arachnids.

Number of extant species
By far the largest number of described invertebrate species are insects. The following table lists the number of described extant species for major invertebrate groups as estimated in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species'', 2014.3.

The IUCN estimates that 66,178 extant vertebrate species have been described, which means that over 95% of the described animal species in the world are invertebrates.

Characteristics
The trait that is common to all invertebrates is the absence of a vertebral column (backbone): this creates a distinction between invertebrates and vertebrates. The distinction is one of convenience only; it is not based on any clear biologically homologous trait, any more than the common trait of having wings functionally unites insects, bats, and birds, or than not having wings unites tortoises, snails and sponges. Being animals, invertebrates are heterotrophs, and require sustenance in the form of the consumption of other organisms. With a few exceptions, such as the Porifera, invertebrates generally have bodies composed of differentiated tissues. There is also typically a digestive chamber with one or two openings to the exterior.

Morphology and symmetry
The body plans of most multicellular organisms exhibit some form of symmetry, whether radial, bilateral, or spherical. A minority, however, exhibit no symmetry. One example of asymmetric invertebrates includes all gastropod species. This is easily seen in snails and sea snails, which have helical shells. Slugs appear externally symmetrical, but their pneumostome (breathing hole) is located on the right side. Other gastropods develop external asymmetry, such as Glaucus atlanticus that develops asymmetrical cerata as they mature. The origin of gastropod asymmetry is a subject of scientific debate.

Other examples of asymmetry are found in fiddler crabs and hermit crabs. They often have one claw much larger than the other. If a male fiddler loses its large claw, it will grow another on the opposite side after moulting. Sessile animals such as sponges are asymmetrical alongside coral colonies (with the exception of the individual polyps that exhibit radial symmetry); alpheidae claws that lack pincers; and some copepods, polyopisthocotyleans, and monogeneans which parasitize by attachment or residency within the gill chamber of their fish hosts).

Nervous system
Neurons differ in invertebrates from mammalian cells. Invertebrates cells fire in response to similar stimuli as mammals, such as tissue trauma, high temperature, or changes in pH. The first invertebrate in which a neuron cell was identified was the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis.

Learning and memory using nociceptors in the sea hare, Aplysia has been described. Mollusk neurons are able to detect increasing pressures and tissue trauma.

Neurons have been identified in a wide range of invertebrate species, including annelids, molluscs, nematodes and arthropods.

Respiratory system
One type of invertebrate respiratory system is the open respiratory system composed of spiracles, tracheae, and tracheoles that terrestrial arthropods have to transport metabolic gases to and from tissues. The distribution of spiracles can vary greatly among the many orders of insects, but in general each segment of the body can have only one pair of spiracles, each of which connects to an atrium and has a relatively large tracheal tube behind it. The tracheae are invaginations of the cuticular exoskeleton that branch (anastomose) throughout the body with diameters from only a few micrometres up to 0.8 mm. The smallest tubes, tracheoles, penetrate cells and serve as sites of diffusion for water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Gas may be conducted through the respiratory system by means of active ventilation or passive diffusion. Unlike vertebrates, insects do not generally carry oxygen in their haemolymph.

A tracheal tube may contain ridge-like circumferential rings of taenidia in various geometries such as loops or helices. In the head, thorax, or abdomen, tracheae may also be connected to air sacs. Many insects, such as grasshoppers and bees, which actively pump the air sacs in their abdomen, are able to control the flow of air through their body. In some aquatic insects, the tracheae exchange gas through the body wall directly, in the form of a gill, or function essentially as normal, via a plastron. Despite being internal, the tracheae of arthropods are shed during moulting (ecdysis).

Reproduction
Like vertebrates, most invertebrates reproduce at least partly through sexual reproduction. They produce specialized reproductive cells that undergo meiosis to produce smaller, motile spermatozoa or larger, non-motile ova. These fuse to form zygotes, which develop into new individuals. Others are capable of asexual reproduction, or sometimes, both methods of reproduction.

Extensive research with model invertebrate species such as Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans has contributed much to our understanding of meiosis and reproduction. However, beyond the few model systems, the modes of reproduction found in invertebrates show incredible diversity. In one extreme example it is estimated that 10% of orbatid mite species have persisted without sexual reproduction and have reproduced asexually for more than 400 million years.

Social interaction
Social behavior is widespread in invertebrates, including cockroaches, termites, aphids, thrips, ants, bees, Passalidae, Acari, spiders, and more. Social interaction is particularly salient in eusocial species but applies to other invertebrates as well.

Insects recognize information transmitted by other insects.

Phyla

The term invertebrates covers several phyla. One of these are the sponges (Porifera). They were long thought to have diverged from other animals early. They lack the complex organization found in most other phyla. Their cells are differentiated, but in most cases not organized into distinct tissues. Sponges typically feed by drawing in water through pores. Some speculate that sponges are not so primitive, but may instead be secondarily simplified. The Ctenophora and the Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish, are radially symmetric and have digestive chambers with a single opening, which serves as both the mouth and the anus. Both have distinct tissues, but they are not organized into organs. There are only two main germ layers, the ectoderm and endoderm, with only scattered cells between them. As such, they are sometimes called diploblastic.

The Echinodermata are radially symmetric and exclusively marine, including starfish (Asteroidea), sea urchins, (Echinoidea), brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea) and feather stars (Crinoidea).

The largest animal phylum is also included within invertebrates: the Arthropoda, including insects, spiders, crabs, and their kin. All these organisms have a body divided into repeating segments, typically with paired appendages. In addition, they possess a hardened exoskeleton that is periodically shed during growth. Two smaller phyla, the Onychophora and Tardigrada, are close relatives of the arthropods and share some traits with them, excluding the hardened exoskeleton. The Nematoda or roundworms, are perhaps the second largest animal phylum, and are also invertebrates. Roundworms are typically microscopic, and occur in nearly every environment where there is water. A number are important parasites. Smaller phyla related to them are the Kinorhyncha, Priapulida, and Loricifera. These groups have a reduced coelom, called a pseudocoelom. Other invertebrates include the Nemertea or ribbon worms, and the Sipuncula.

Another phylum is Platyhelminthes, the flatworms. These were originally considered primitive, but it now appears they developed from more complex ancestors. Flatworms are acoelomates, lacking a body cavity, as are their closest relatives, the microscopic Gastrotricha. The Rotifera or rotifers, are common in aqueous environments. Invertebrates also include the Acanthocephala or spiny-headed worms, the Gnathostomulida, Micrognathozoa, and the Cycliophora.

Also included are two of the most successful animal phyla, the Mollusca and Annelida. The former, which is the second-largest animal phylum by number of described species, includes animals such as snails, clams, and squids, and the latter comprises the segmented worms, such as earthworms and leeches. These two groups have long been considered close relatives because of the common presence of trochophore larvae, but the annelids were considered closer to the arthropods because they are both segmented. Now, this is generally considered convergent evolution, owing to many morphological and genetic differences between the two phyla.

Among lesser phyla of invertebrates are the Hemichordata, or acorn worms, and the Chaetognatha, or arrow worms. Other phyla include Acoelomorpha, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Entoprocta, Phoronida, and Xenoturbellida.

Classification of invertebrates
Invertebrates can be classified into several main categories, some of which are taxonomically obsolescent or debatable, but still used as terms of convenience. Each however appears in its own article at the following links.

 * Sponges (Porifera)
 * Comb jellies (Ctenophora)
 * Medusozoans and corals (Cnidaria)
 * Acoels (Xenacoelomorpha)
 * Flatworms (Platyhelminthes)
 * Bristleworms, earthworms and leeches (Annelida)
 * Insects, springtails, crustaceans, myriapods, chelicerates (Arthropoda)
 * Chitons, snails, slugs, bivalves, tusk shells, cephalopods (Mollusca)
 * Roundworms or threadworms (Nematoda)
 * Rotifers (Rotifera)
 * Tardigrades (Tardigrada)
 * Scalidophores (Scalidophora)
 * Lophophorates (Lophophorata)
 * Velvet worms (Onychophora)
 * Arrow worms (Chaetognatha)
 * Gordian worms or horsehair worms (Nematomorpha)
 * Ribbon worms (Nemertea)
 * Placozoa
 * Loricifera
 * Starfishes, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, sea lilies and brittle stars (Echinodermata)
 * Acorn worms, cephalodiscids and graptolites (Hemichordata)
 * Lancelets (Amphioxiformes)
 * Salps, pyrosomes, doliolids, larvaceans and sea squirts (Tunicata)
 * Cycliophora (currently a monogeneric phylum)

History
The earliest animal fossils appear to be those of invertebrates. 665-million-year-old fossils in the Trezona Formation at Trezona Bore, West Central Flinders, South Australia have been interpreted as being early sponges. Some paleontologists suggest that animals appeared much earlier, possibly as early as 1 billion years ago though they probably became multicellular in the Tonian. Trace fossils such as tracks and burrows found in the late Neoproterozoic era indicate the presence of triploblastic worms, roughly as large (about 5 mm wide) and complex as earthworms.

Around 453 MYA, animals began diversifying, and many of the important groups of invertebrates diverged from one another. Fossils of invertebrates are found in various types of sediment from the Phanerozoic. Fossils of invertebrates are commonly used in stratigraphy.

Classification
Carl Linnaeus divided these animals into only two groups, the Insecta and the now-obsolete Vermes (worms). Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was appointed to the position of "Curator of Insecta and Vermes" at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793, both coined the term "invertebrate" to describe such animals and divided the original two groups into ten, by splitting Arachnida and Crustacea from the Linnean Insecta, and Mollusca, Annelida, Cirripedia, Radiata, Coelenterata and Infusoria from the Linnean Vermes. They are now classified into over 30 phyla, from simple organisms such as sea sponges and flatworms to complex animals such as arthropods and molluscs.

Significance of the group
Invertebrates are animals without a vertebral column. This has led to the conclusion that invertebrates are a group that deviates from the normal, vertebrates. This has been said to be because researchers in the past, such as Lamarck, viewed vertebrates as a "standard": in Lamarck's theory of evolution, he believed that characteristics acquired through the evolutionary process involved not only survival, but also progression toward a "higher form", to which humans and vertebrates were closer than invertebrates were. Although goal-directed evolution has been abandoned, the distinction of invertebrates and vertebrates persists to this day, even though the grouping has been noted to be "hardly natural or even very sharp." Another reason cited for this continued distinction is that Lamarck created a precedent through his classifications which is now difficult to escape from. It is also possible that some humans believe that, they themselves being vertebrates, the group deserves more attention than invertebrates. In any event, in the 1968 edition of Invertebrate Zoology, it is noted that "division of the Animal Kingdom into vertebrates and invertebrates is artificial and reflects human bias in favor of man's own relatives." The book also points out that the group lumps a vast number of species together, so that no one characteristic describes all invertebrates. In addition, some species included are only remotely related to one another, with some more related to vertebrates than other invertebrates (see Paraphyly).

In research
For many centuries, invertebrates were neglected by biologists, in favor of big vertebrates and "useful" or charismatic species. Invertebrate biology was not a major field of study until the work of Linnaeus and Lamarck in the 18th century. During the 20th century, invertebrate zoology became one of the major fields of natural sciences, with prominent discoveries in the fields of medicine, genetics, palaeontology, and ecology. The study of invertebrates has also benefited law enforcement, as arthropods, and especially insects, were discovered to be a source of information for forensic investigators.

Two of the most commonly studied model organisms nowadays are invertebrates: the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. They have long been the most intensively studied model organisms, and were among the first life-forms to be genetically sequenced. This was facilitated by the severely reduced state of their genomes, but many genes, introns, and linkages have been lost. Analysis of the starlet sea anemone genome has emphasised the importance of sponges, placozoans, and choanoflagellates, also being sequenced, in explaining the arrival of 1500 ancestral genes unique to animals. Invertebrates are also used by scientists in the field of aquatic biomonitoring to evaluate the effects of water pollution and climate change.

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Talk:Imprecise language

[Untitled]
Related to this are the scientific studies about the brain to show that human brains to not store definitions of words in terms of property-sets, boundaries, and the other tools of formal logic. The human brain stores prototypes, i.e., an image of some canonical thing, and labels things based on resemblance to the prototype, such resemblance being necessarily vague. --Lee Daniel Crocker

This was by no means settled: there are various theories about how human concept use and formation, of course. This article contains some useful information, but it absolutely is not an encyclopedia article at present. I'd like to go to work on this when I get a chance... --LMS

I think the empirical question is well settled among working scientists. There is resistance among theoreticians and philosophers, but the experiments are quite clear and you really have to strain to interpret them any other way. Cognitive science has made quite a bit of progress in determining how the human brain works. That isn't to say that such results imply anything about the metaphysical nature of the world--or even the abstract concepts of thought, reason, cognition, etc. But physical human brains do work in very specific ways, and many of those ways have been clearly demonstated and measured. --Lee Daniel Crocker

I didn't mean to deny the generalities you just stated, Lee. --LMS

Three words. Fuzzy logic.
 * That's two (2), this many: || words. 203.122.200.195 09:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I tried to clarify this article and remove first person, but I wasn't too clear on some of the arguments, and this really isn't my strong suit either, so someone who actually knows something about this topic might want to check this over. Also, I think it needs a really clear definition of what a Sorites argument is. --James

I have the teeniest bit of knowledge about science and logic and such, and I think Wikipedia articles should be written simply enough for someone with as little knowledge as me should understand them on these topics (as opposed to math, which I don't and will never understand) -- I haven't the foggiest idea what imprecise language is after reading this article. What is "The Argument" arguing? Is it for or against the existence of imprecise language? What the hell does "consensus" mean in the context? (if the section at the end is supposed to answer this, it shouldn't be at the end of the article, and should be more explicit) Is Sorites a person or what? The "attempt to clarify matters" is more confusing than what it is presumably attempting to clarify. Tuf-Kat

--- ===Case for a merger?=== There are four articles in Wikipedia dealing with essentially one and the same philosophical topic: Imprecise language, Paradox of the heap, Vagueness and Continuum fallacy. (Sorites paradox redirects to Paradox of the heap.) I have done a little editing of the Vagueness page, but really I think all four pages should be merged, or that at very least, they be rationalised to two pages, one a longer one on the philosophical problem of vagueness, and the other a quick summary of the sorites paradox with a link to the vagueness page for a more in-depth discussion. What do people think? Matt 9 Nov. 2005

--

Revised proposal for major change to the Imprecise language page
The Imprecise language page currently isn't doing much good as it is, judging from some of the above comments. Furthermore I think it is redundant, given the pages on vagueness and also ambiguity (and paradox of the heap and continuum fallacy), which I think are better quality articles. Therefore my proposal is that the Imprecise language page should simply read something like this:

 * == Imprecise language ==

 * Language might be said to imprecise because it exhibits one or more of the following features: vagueness; ambiguity. Please see the individual pages on vagueness and ambiguity for an in-depth discussion.

---

There is also discussion on this proposal at Talk: vagueness.

Matt, now Matt9090. 10 Nov. 2005

Lojban/ Loglan reference
I shifted the Loglan/ Lojban reference in slightly edited form from the Imprecise language page to the ambiguity page, since these languages do not seek to avoid Vagueness; they merely avoid ambiguity. (At the imprecise language page, the suggestion was that they avoid vagueness.) For example, Loglan users presumably do not have in mind, when they apply their predicate "X is tall" to "John" (asserting of John that he is tall), that there is a certain exact number of inches which John's height is thereby said to exceed. So their word for "tall" is still vague, and hence imprecise, in this respect. This is so even if vagueness is only one type of imprecision. Matt9090 10 Nov. 2005

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Imprecise language


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Ivar Aasen

Ivar Andreas Aasen (5 August 1813 – 23 September 1896) was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright, and poet. He is best known for having assembled one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Nynorsk, from various dialects.

Background
He was born as Iver Andreas Aasen at Åsen in Ørsta (then Ørsten), in the district of Sunnmøre, on the west coast of Norway. His father, a peasant with a small farm, Ivar Jonsson, died in 1826. The younger Ivar was brought up to farmwork, but he assiduously cultivated all his leisure in reading. An early interest of his was botany. When he was eighteen, he opened an elementary school in his native parish. In 1833 he entered the household of Hans Conrad Thoresen, the husband of the eminent writer Magdalene Thoresen, in Herøy (then Herø), and there he picked up the elements of Latin. Gradually, and by dint of infinite patience and concentration, the young peasant mastered many languages, and began the scientific study of their structure. Ivar single-handedly created a new language for Norway to become the "literary" language.

Career
About 1846 he had freed himself from all the burden of manual labour, and could occupy his thoughts with the dialect of his native district, Sunnmøre; his first publication was a small collection of folk songs in the Sunnmøre dialect (1843). His remarkable abilities now attracted general attention, and he was helped to continue his studies undisturbed. His Grammar of the Norwegian Dialects (Det Norske Folkesprogs Grammatik, 1848) was the result of much labour, and of journeys taken to every part of the country. Aasen's famous Dictionary of the Norwegian Dialects (Ordbog over det Norske Folkesprog) appeared in its original form in 1850, and from this publication dates all the wide cultivation of the popular language in Norwegian, since Aasen really did no less than construct, out of the different materials at his disposal, a popular language or definite folke-maal (people's language) for Norway. By 1853, he had created the norm for utilizing his new language, which he called Landsmaal, meaning country language. With certain modifications, the most important of which were introduced later by Aasen himself, but also through a latter policy aiming to merge this Norwegian language with Dano-Norwegian, this language has become Nynorsk ("New Norwegian"), the second of Norway's two official languages (the other being Bokmål, the Dano-Norwegian descendant of the Danish language used in Norway in Aasen's time). An unofficial variety of Norwegian closer to Aasen's language is still found in Høgnorsk ("High Norwegian"). Today, some consider Nynorsk on equal footing with Bokmål, as Bokmål tends to be used more in radio and television and most newspapers, whereas New Norse (Nynorsk) is used equally in government work as well as approximately 17% of schools. Although it is not as common as its brother language, it needs to be looked upon as a viable language, as a large minority of Norwegians use it as their primary language including many scholars and authors. New Norse is both a written and spoken language.

Aasen composed poems and plays in the composite dialect to show how it should be used; one of these dramas, The Heir (1855), was frequently acted, and may be considered as the pioneer of all the abundant dialect-literature of the last half-century of the 1800s, from Vinje to Garborg. In 1856, he published Norske Ordsprog, a treatise on Norwegian proverbs. Aasen continuously enlarged and improved his grammars and his dictionary. He lived very quietly in lodgings in Oslo (then Christiania), surrounded by his books and shrinking from publicity, but his name grew into wide political favour as his ideas about the language of the peasants became more and more the watch-word of the popular party. In 1864, he published his definitive grammar of Nynorsk and in 1873 he published the definitive dictionary.

Quite early in his career, in 1842, he had begun to receive a grant to enable him to give his entire attention to his philological investigations; and the Storting (Norwegian parliament), conscious of the national importance of his work, treated him in this respect with more and more generosity as he advanced in years. He continued his investigations to the last, but it may be said that, after the 1873 edition of his Dictionary (with a new title: Norsk Ordbog), he added but little to his stores. Ivar Aasen holds perhaps an isolated place in literary history as the one man who has invented, or at least selected and constructed, a language which has pleased so many thousands of his countrymen that they have accepted it for their schools, their sermons and their songs. He died in Christiania on 23 September 1896, and was buried with public honours.

The Ivar Aasen Centre
Ivar Aasen-tunet, an institution devoted to the Nynorsk language, opened in June 2000. The building in Ørsta was designed by Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn. Their web page includes most of Aasens' texts, numerous other examples of Nynorsk literature (in Nettbiblioteket, the Internet Library), and some articles, including some in English, about language history in Norway.

2013 Language year
Språkåret 2013 (The Language Year 2013) celebrated Ivar Aasen's 200 year anniversary, as well as the 100 year anniversary of Det Norske Teateret. The year's main focus was to celebrate linguistic diversity in Norway. In a poll released in connection with the celebration, 56% of Norwegians said they held positive views of Aasen, while 7% held negative views. On Aasen's 200 anniversary, 5 August 2013, Bergens Tidende, which is normally published mainly in Bokmål, published an edition fully in Nynorsk in memory of Aasen.

title: Ivar Aasen


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Irredentism

Irredentism is one state's desire to annex the territory of another state. This desire can be motivated by ethnic reasons because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent state. Historical reasons may also be responsible, i.e., that the territory previously formed part of the parent state. However, difficulties in applying the concept to concrete cases have given rise to academic debates about its precise definition. Disagreements concern whether either or both ethnic and historical reasons have to be present and whether non-state actors can also engage in irredentism. A further dispute is whether attempts to absorb a full neighboring state are also included. There are various types of irredentism. For typical forms of irredentism, the parent state already exists before the territorial conflict with a neighboring state arises. However, there are also forms of irredentism in which the parent state is newly created by uniting an ethnic group spread across several countries. Another distinction concerns whether the country to which the disputed territory currently belongs is a regular state, a former colony, or a collapsed state.

A central research topic concerning irredentism is the question of how it is to be explained or what causes it. Many explanations hold that ethnic homogeneity within a state makes irredentism more likely. Discrimination against the ethnic group in the neighboring territory is another contributing factor. A closely related explanation argues that national identities based primarily on ethnicity, culture, and history increase irredentist tendencies. Another approach is to explain irredentism as an attempt to increase power and wealth. In this regard, it is argued that irredentist claims are more likely if the neighboring territory is relatively rich. Many explanations also focus on the regime type and hold that democracies are less likely to engage in irredentism while anocracies are particularly open to it.

Irredentism has been an influential force in world politics since the mid-nineteenth century. It has been responsible for many armed conflicts, even though international law is hostile to it and irredentist movements often fail to achieve their goals. The term was originally coined from the Italian phrase Italia irredenta and referred to an Italian movement after 1878 claiming parts of Switzerland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Often discussed cases of irredentism include Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, Somalia's invasion of Ethiopia in 1977, and Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Further examples are attempts to establish a Greater Serbia following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Irredentism is closely related to revanchism and secession. Revanchism is an attempt to annex territory belonging to another state. It is motivated by the goal of taking revenge for a previous grievance, in contrast to the goal of irredentism of building an ethnically unified nation-state. In the case of secession, a territory breaks away and forms an independent state instead of merging with another state.

Definition and etymology
The term irredentism was coined from the Italian phrase Italia irredenta (unredeemed Italy). This phrase originally referred to territory in Austria-Hungary that was mostly or partly inhabited by ethnic Italians. In particular, it applies to Trentino and Trieste, but also Gorizia, Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Irredentist projects often use the term "Greater" to label the desired outcome of their expansion, as in "Greater Serbia" or "Greater Russia".

Irredentism is often understood as the claim that territories belonging to one state should be incorporated into another state because their population is ethnically similar or because it historically belonged to the other state before. Many definitions of irredentism have been proposed to give a more precise formulation. Despite a wide overlap concerning its general features, there is no consensus about its exact characterization. The disagreements matter for evaluating whether irredentism was the cause of war which is difficult in many cases and different definitions often lead to opposite conclusions.

There is wide consensus that irredentism is a form of territorial dispute involving the attempt to annex territories belonging to a neighboring state. However, not all such attempts constitute forms of irredentism and there is no academic consensus on precisely what other features need to be present. This concerns disagreements about who claims the territory, for what reasons they do so, and how much territory is claimed. Most scholars define irredentism as a claim made by one state on the territory of another state. In this regard, there are three essential entities to irredentism: (1) an irredentist state or parent state, (2) a neighboring host state or target state, and (3) the disputed territory belonging to the host state, often referred to as irredenta. According to this definition, popular movements demanding territorial change by non-state actors do not count as irredentist in the strict sense. A different definition characterizes irredentism as the attempt of an ethnic minority to break away and join their "real" motherland even though this minority is a non-state actor.

The reason for engaging in territorial conflict is another issue, with some scholars stating that irredentism is primarily motivated by ethnicity. In this view, the population in the neighboring territory is ethnically similar and the intention is to retrieve the area to unite the people. This definition implies, for example, that the majority of the border disputes in the history of Latin America were not forms of irredentism. Usually, irredentism is defined in terms of the motivation of the irredentist state, even if the territory is annexed against the will of the local population. Other theorists focus more on the historical claim that the disputed territory used to be part of the state's ancestral homeland. This is close to the literal meaning of the original Italian expression terra irredenta as "unredeemed land". In this view, the ethnicity of the people inhabiting this territory is not important. However, it is also possible to combine both characterizations, i.e. that the motivation is either ethnic or historical or both. Some scholars, like Benjamin Neuberger, include geographical reasons in their definitions.

A further disagreement concerns the amount of area that is to be annexed. Usually, irredentism is restricted to the attempt to incorporate some parts of another state. In this regard, irredentism challenges established borders with the neighboring state but does not challenge the existence of the neighboring state in general. However, some definitions of irredentism also include attempts to absorb the whole neighboring state and not just a part of it. In this sense, claims by both South Korea and North Korea to incorporate the whole of the Korean Peninsula would be considered a form of irredentism.

A popular view combining many of the elements listed above holds that irredentism is based on incongruence between the borders of a state and the boundaries of the corresponding nation. State borders are usually clearly delimited, both physically and on maps. National boundaries, on the other hand, are less tangible since they correspond to a group's perception of its historic, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. Irredentism may manifest if state borders do not correspond to national boundaries. The objective of irredentism is to enlarge a state to establish a congruence between its borders and the boundaries of the corresponding nation.

Types
Various types of irredentism have been proposed. However, not everyone agrees that all the types listed here constitute forms of irredentism and it often depends on what definition is used. According to political theorists Naomi Chazan and Donald L. Horowitz, there are two types of irredentism. The typical case involves one state that intends to annex territories belonging to a neighboring state. Nazi Germany’s claim on the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia is an example of this form of irredentism.

For the second type, there is no pre-existing parent state. Instead, a cohesive group existing as a minority in multiple countries intends to unify to form a new parent state. The intended creation of a Kurdistan state uniting the Kurds living in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran is an example of the second type. If such a project is successful for only one segment, the result is secession and not irredentism. This happened, for example, during the breakup of Yugoslavia when Yugoslavian Slovenes formed the new state of Slovenia while the Austrian Slovenes did not join them and remained part of Austria. Not all theorists accept that the second type constitutes a form of irredentism. In this regard, it is often argued that it is too similar to secession to maintain a distinction between the two. For example, political scholar Benyamin Neuberger holds that a pre-existing parent state is necessary for irredentism.

Political scientist Thomas Ambrosio restricts his definition to cases involving a pre-existing parent state and distinguishes three types of irredentism: (1) between two states, (2) between a state and a former colony, and (3) between a state and a collapsed state. The typical case is between two states. A textbook example of this is Somalia's invasion of Ethiopia. In the second case of decolonization, the territory to be annexed is a former colony of another state and not a regular part of it. An example is the Indonesian invasion and occupation of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. In the case of state collapse, one state disintegrates and a neighboring state absorbs some of its former territories. This was the case for the irredentist movements by Croatia and Serbia during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Explanations
Explanations of irredentism try to determine what causes irredentism, how it unfolds, and how it can be peacefully resolved. Various hypotheses have been proposed but there is still very little consensus on how irredentism is to be explained despite its prevalence and its long history of provoking armed conflicts. Some of these proposals can be combined but others conflict with each other and the available evidence may not be sufficient to decide between them. An active research topic in this regard concerns the reasons for irredentism. Many countries have ethnic kin outside their borders. But only a few are willing to engage in violent conflicts to annex foreign territory in an attempt to unite their kin. Research on the causes of irredentism tries to explain why some countries pursue irredentism but others do not. Relevant factors often discussed include ethnicity, nationalism, economic considerations, the desire to increase power, and the type of regime.

Ethnicity and nationalism
A common explanation of irredentism focuses on ethnic arguments. It is based on the observation that irredentist claims are primarily advanced by states with a homogenous ethnic population. This is explained by the idea that, if a state is composed of several ethnic groups, then annexing a territory inhabited primarily by one of those groups would shift the power balance in favor of this group. For this reason, other groups in the state are likely to internally reject the irredentist claims. This inhibiting factor is not present for homogeneous states. A similar argument is also offered for the enclave to be annexed: an ethnically heterogenous enclave is less likely to desire to be absorbed by another state for ethnic reasons since this would only benefit one ethnic group. These considerations explain, for example, why irredentism is not very common in Africa since most African states are ethnically heterogeneous. Relevant factors for the ethnic motivation for irredentism are how large the dominant ethnic group is relative to other groups and how large it is in absolute terms. It also matters whether the ethnic group is relatively dispersed or located in a small core area and whether it is politically disadvantaged.

Explanations focusing on nationalism are closely related to ethnicity-based explanations. Nationalism can be defined as the claim that the boundaries of a state should match those of the nation. According to constructivist accounts, for example, the dominant national identity is one of the central factors behind irredentism. In this view, identities based on ethnicity, culture, and history can easily invite tendencies to enlarge national borders. They may justify the goal of integrating ethnically and culturally similar territories. Civic national identities focusing more on a political nature, on the other hand, are more closely tied to pre-existing national boundaries.

Structural accounts use a slightly different approach and focus on the relationship between nationalism and the regional context. They focus on the tension between state sovereignty and national self-determination. State sovereignty is the principle of international law holding that each state has sovereignty over its own territory. It means that states are not allowed to interfere with essentially domestic affairs of other states. National self-determination, on the other hand, concerns the right of people to determine their own international political status. According to the structural explanation, emphasis on national self-determination may legitimize irredentist claims while the principle of state sovereignty defends the status quo of the existing sovereign borders. This position is supported by the observation that irredentist conflicts are much more common during times of international upheavals.

Another factor commonly cited as a force fueling irredentism is discrimination against the main ethnic group in the enclave. Irredentist states often try to legitimize their aggression against neighbors by presenting them as humanitarian interventions aimed at protecting their discriminated ethnic kin. This justification was used, for example, in Armenia's engagement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, in Serbia's involvement in the Croatian War of Independence, and in Russia's annexation of Crimea. Some political theorists, like David S. Siroky and Christopher W. Hale, hold that there is little empirical evidence for arguments based on ethnic homogeneity and discrimination. In this view, they are mainly used as a pretext to hide other goals, such as material gain.

Another relevant factor is the outlook of the population inhabiting the territory to be annexed. The desire of the irredentist state to annex a foreign territory and the desire of that territory to be annexed do not always overlap. In some cases, a minority group does not want to be annexed, as was the case for the Crimean Tatars in Russia's annexation of Crimea. In other cases, a minority group would want to be annexed but the intended parent state is not interested.

Power and economy
Various accounts stress the role of power and economic benefits as reasons for irredentism. Realist explanations focus on the power balance between the irredentist state and the target state: the more this power balance shifts in favor of the irredentist state, the more likely violent conflicts become. A key factor in this regard is also the reaction of the international community, i.e. whether irredentist claims are tolerated or rejected. Irredentism can be used as a tool or pretext to increase the parent state's power. Rational choice theories study how irredentism is caused by decision-making processes of certain groups within a state. In this view, irredentism is a tool used by elites to secure their political interests. They do so by appealing to popular nationalist sentiments. This can be used, for example, to gain public support against political rivals or to divert attention away from domestic problems.

Other explanations focus on economic factors. For example, larger states enjoy advantages that come with having an increased market and decreased per capita cost of defense. However, there are also disadvantages to having a bigger state, such as the challenges that come with accommodating a wider range of citizens' preferences. Based on these lines of thought, it has been argued that states are more likely to advocate irredentist claims if the enclave is a relatively rich territory.

Regime type
An additional relevant factor is the regime type of both the irredentist state and the neighboring state. In this regard, it is often argued that democratic states are less likely to engage in irredentism. One reason cited is that democracies often are more inclusive of other ethnic groups. Another is that democracies are in general less likely to engage in violent conflicts. This is closely related to democratic peace theory, which claims that democracies try to avoid armed conflicts with other democracies. This is also supported by the observation that most irredentist conflicts are started by authoritarian regimes. However, irredentism constitutes a paradox for democratic systems. The reason is that democratic ideals pertaining to the ethnic group can often be used to justify its claim, which may be interpreted as the expression of a popular will toward unification. But there are also cases of irredentism made primarily by a government that is not broadly supported by the population.

According to Siroky and Hale, anocratic regimes are most likely to engage in irredentist conflicts and to become their victim. This is based on the idea that they share some democratic ideals favoring irredentism but often lack institutional stability and accountability. This makes it more likely for the elites to consolidate their power using ethno-nationalist appeals to the masses.

Importance, reactions, and consequences
Irredentism is a widespread phenomenon and has been an influential force in world politics since the mid-nineteenth century. It has been responsible for countless conflicts. There are still many unresolved irredentist disputes today that constitute discords between nations. In this regard, irredentism is a potential source of conflict in many places and often escalates into military confrontations between states. For example, international relation theorist Markus Kornprobst argues that "no other issue over which states fight is as war-prone as irredentism". Political scholar Rachel Walker points out that "there is scarcely a country in the world that is not involved in some sort of irredentist quarrel ... although few would admit to this". Political theorists Stephen M. Saideman and R. William Ayres argue that many of the most important conflicts of the 1990s were caused by irredentism, such as the wars for a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia. Irredentism carries a lot of potential for future conflicts since many states have kin groups in adjacent countries. It has been argued that it poses a significant danger to human security and the international order. For these reasons, irredentism has been a central topic in the field of international relations.

For the most part, international law is hostile to irredentism. For example, the United Nations Charter calls for respect for established territorial borders and defends state sovereignty. Similar outlooks are taken by the Organization of African Unity, the Organization of American States, and the Helsinki Final Act. Since irredentist claims are based on conflicting sovereignty assertions, it is often difficult to find a working compromise. Peaceful resolutions of irredentist conflicts often result in mutual recognition of de facto borders rather than territorial change. International relation theorists Martin Griffiths et al. argue that the threat of rising irredentism may be reduced by focusing on political pluralism and respect for minority rights.

Irredentist movements, peaceful or violent, are rarely successful. In many cases, despite aiming to help ethnic minorities, irredentism often has the opposite effect and ends up worsening their living conditions. On the one hand, the state still in control of those territories may decide to further discriminate against them as an attempt to decrease the threat to its national security. On the other hand, the irredentist state may merely claim to care about the ethnic minorities but, in truth, use such claims only as a pretext to increase its territory or to destabilize an opponent.

Often-discussed historical examples
The emergence of irredentism is tied to the rise of modern nationalism and the idea of a nation-state, which are often linked to the French Revolution. However, some political scholars, like Griffiths et al., argue that phenomena similar to irredentism existed even before. For example, part of the justification for the crusades was to liberate fellow Christians from Muslim rule and to redeem the Holy Land. Nonetheless, most theorists see irredentism as a more recent phenomenon. The term was coined in the 19th century and is linked to border disputes between modern states.

Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 is an often-cited example of irredentism. At the time, the Sudetenland formed part of Czechoslovakia but had a majority German population. Adolf Hitler justified the annexation based on his allegation that Sudeten Germans were being mistreated by the Czechoslovak government. The Sudetenland was yielded to Germany following the Munich Agreement in an attempt to prevent the outbreak of a major war.

Somalia's invasion of Ethiopia in 1977 is frequently discussed as a case of African irredentism. The goal of this attack was to unite the significant Somali population living in the Ogaden region with their kin by annexing this area to create a Greater Somalia. The invasion escalated into a war of attrition that lasted about eight months. Somalia was close to reaching its goal but failed in the end, mainly due to an intervention by socialist countries.

Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 is cited as an example of irredentism in South America, where the Argentine military government sought to exploit national sentiment over the islands to deflect attention from domestic concerns. President Juan Perón exploited the issue to reduce British influence in Argentina, instituting educational reform teaching the islands were Argentine and creating a strong nationalist sentiment over the issue. The war ended with a victory for the UK after about two months even though many analysts considered the Argentine military position unassailable. Although defeated, Argentina did not officially declare the cessation of hostilities until 1989 and successive Argentine Governments have continued to claim the islands. The islands are now self-governing with the UK responsible for defence and foreign relations. Referenda in 1986 and 2013 show a preference for British sovereignty among the population. Both the UK and Spain claimed sovereignty in the 18th Century and Argentina claims the islands as a colonial legacy from independence in 1816.

The breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in various irredentist projects. They include Slobodan Milošević's attempts to establish a Greater Serbia by absorbing some regions of neighboring states that were part of former Yugoslavia. A simultaneous similar project aimed at the establishment of a Greater Croatia.

Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 is a more recent example of irredentism. Beginning in the 15th century CE, the Crimean peninsula was a Tartar Khanate. However, in 1783 the Russian Empire broke a previous treaty and annexed Crimea. In 1954, when both Russia and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union, it was transferred from Russia to Ukraine. More than fifty years later, Russia alleged that the Ukrainian government did not uphold the rights of ethnic Russians inhabiting Crimea, using this as a justification for the annexation in March 2014. However, it has been claimed that this was only a pretext to increase its territory and power. Ultimately, Russia invaded the mainland territory of Ukraine in February 2022, thereby escalating the war that continues to the present day.

Other frequently discussed cases of irredentism include disputes between Pakistan and India over Jammu and Kashmir as well as China's claims on Taiwan.

Ethnicity
Ethnicity plays a central role in irredentism since most irredentist states justify their expansionist agenda based on shared ethnicity. In this regard, the goal of unifying parts of an ethnic group in a common nation-state is used as a justification for annexing foreign territories and going to war if the neighboring state resists. Ethnicity is a grouping of people according to a set of shared attributes and similarities. It divides people into groups based on attributes like physical features, customs, tradition, historical background, language, culture, religion, and values. Not all these factors are equally relevant for every ethnic group. For some groups, one factor may predominate, as in ethno-linguistic, ethno-racial, and ethno-religious identities. In most cases, ethnic identities are based on a set of common features.

A central aspect of many ethnic identities is that all members share a common homeland or place of origin. This place of origin does not have to correspond to the area where the majority of the ethnic group currently lives in case they migrated from their homeland. Another feature is a common language or dialect. In many cases, religion also forms a vital aspect of ethnicity. Shared culture is another significant factor. It is a wide term and can include characteristic social institutions, diet, dress, and other practices. It is often difficult to draw clear boundaries between people based on their ethnicity. For this reason, some definitions focus less on actual objective features and stress instead that what unites an ethnic group is a subjective belief that such common features exist. In this view, the common belief matters more than the extent to which those shared features actually exist. Examples of large ethnic groups are the Han Chinese, the Arabs, the Bengalis, the Punjabis, and the Turks.

Some theorists, like sociologist John Milton Yinger, use terms like ethnic group or ethnicity as near-synonyms for nation. Nations are usually based on ethnicity but what sets them apart from ethnicity is their political form as a state or a state-like entity. The physical and visible aspects of ethnicity, such as skin color and facial features, are often referred to as race, which may thus be understood as a subset of ethnicity. However, some theorists, like sociologist Pierre van den Berghe, contrast the two by restricting ethnicity to cultural traits and race to physical traits.

Ethnic solidarity can provide a sense of belonging as well as physical and mental security. It can help people identify with a common purpose. However, ethnicity has also been the source of many conflicts. It has been responsible for various forms of mass violence, including ethnic cleansing and genocide. The perpetrators usually form part of the ruling majority and target ethnic minority groups. Not all ethnic-based conflicts involve mass violence, like many forms of ethnic discrimination.

Nationalism and nation-state
Irredentism is often seen as a product of modern nationalism, i.e. the claim that a nation should have its own sovereign state. In this regard, irredentism emerged with and depends on the modern idea of nation-states. The start of modern nationalism is often associated with the French Revolution in 1789. This spawned various nationalist revolutions in Europe around the mid-nineteenth century. They often resulted in a replacement of dynastic imperial governments. A central aspect of nationalism is that it sees states as entities with clearly delimited borders that should correspond to national boundaries. Irredentism reflects the importance people ascribe to these borders and how exactly they are drawn. One difficulty in this regard is that the exact boundaries are often difficult to justify and are therefore challenged in favor of alternatives. Irredentism manifests some of the most aggressive aspects of modern nationalism. It can be seen as a side effect of nationalism paired with the importance it ascribes to borders and the difficulties in agreeing on them.

Secession
Irredentism is closely related to secession. Secession can be defined as "an attempt by an ethnic group claiming a homeland to withdraw with its territory from the authority of a larger state of which it is a part." Irredentism, by contrast, is initiated by members of an ethnic group in one state to incorporate territories across their border housing ethnically kindred people. Secession happens when a part of an existing state breaks away to form an independent entity. This was the case, for example, in the United States, when many of the slaveholding southern states decided to secede from the Union to form the Confederate States of America in 1861.

In the case of irredentism, the break-away area does not become independent but merges into another entity. Irredentism is often seen as a government decision, unlike secession. Both movements are influential phenomena in contemporary politics but, as Horowitz argues, secession movements are much more frequent in postcolonial states. However, he also holds that secession movements are less likely to succeed since they usually have very few military resources compared to irredentist states. For this reason, they normally need prolonged external assistance, often from another state. However, such state policies are subject to change. For example, the Indian government supported the Sri Lankan Tamil secessionists up to 1987 but then reach an agreement with the Sri Lankan government and helped suppress the movement.

Horowitz holds that it is important to distinguish secessionist and irredentist movements since they differ significantly concerning their motivation, context, and goals. Despite these differences, irredentism and secessionism are closely related nonetheless. In some cases, the two tendencies may exist side by side. It is also possible that the advocates of one movement change their outlook and promote the other. Whether a movement favors irredentism or secessionism is determined, among other things, by the prospects of forming an independent state in contrast to joining another state. A further factor is whether the irredentist state is likely to espouse a similar ideology to the one found in the territory intending to break away. The anticipated reaction of the international community is an additional factor, i.e. whether it would embrace, tolerate, or reject the detachment or the absorption by another state.

Revanchism
Irredentism and revanchism are two closely related phenomena because both of them involve the attempt to annex territory which belongs to another state. They differ concerning the motivation fuelling this attempt. Irredentism has a positive goal of building a "greater" state that fulfills the ideals of a nation-state. It aims to unify people claimed to belong together because of their shared national identity based on ethnic, cultural, and historical aspects.

For revanchism, on the other hand, the goal is more negative because it focuses on taking revenge for some form of grievance or injustice suffered earlier. In this regard, it is motivated by resentment and aims to reverse territorial losses due to a previous defeat. In an attempt to contrast irredentism with revanchism, political scientist Anna M. Wittmann argues that Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 constitutes a form of irredentism because of its emphasis on a shared language and ethnicity. But she characterizes Germany's invasion of Poland the following year as a form of revanchism due to its justification as a revenge intended to reverse previous territorial losses. The term "revanchism" comes from the French term revanche, meaning revenge. It was originally used in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War for nationalists intending to reclaim the lost territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Saddam Hussein justified the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by claiming that Kuwait had always been an integral part of Iraq and only became an independent nation due to the interference of the British Empire.

title: Irredentism


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Inuit languages

The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador. The Inuit languages are one of the two branches of the Eskimoan language family, the other being the Yupik languages, which are spoken in Alaska and the Russian Far East. Most Inuit people live in one of three countries: Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark; Canada, specifically in Nunavut, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories, the Nunavik region of Quebec, and the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador; and the United States, specifically in northern and western Alaska.

The total population of Inuit speaking their traditional languages is difficult to assess with precision, since most counts rely on self-reported census data that may not accurately reflect usage or competence. Greenland census estimates place the number of Inuit language speakers there at roughly 50,000. According to the 2021 Canadian census, the Inuit population of Canada is 70,540, of which 33,790 report Inuit as their first language. Greenland and Canada account for the bulk of Inuit speakers, although about 7,500 Alaskans speak some variety of an Inuit language out of a total population of over 13,000 Inuit. An estimated 7,000 Greenlandic Inuit live in Denmark, the largest group outside of North America. Thus, the total population of Inuit speakers is about 100,000 people.

Nomenclature
The traditional language of the Inuit is a system of closely interrelated dialects that are not readily comprehensible from one end of the Inuit world to the other; some people do not think of it as a single language but rather a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking the Inuit language into specific member languages since it forms a dialect continuum. Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely its neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level.

As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for its own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating a great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it.

In Greenland the official form of Inuit language, and the official language of the state, is called Kalaallisut. In other languages, it is often called Greenlandic or some cognate term. The Inuit languages of Alaska are called Inupiatun, but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them Qawiaraq, or for some dialects, Bering Strait Inupiatun.

In Canada, the word Inuktitut is routinely used to refer to all Canadian variants of the Inuit traditional language, and it is under that name that it is recognised as one of the official languages of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. However, one of the variants of western Nunavut, and the eastern Northwest Territories, is called Inuinnaqtun to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while the variants of the Northwest Territories are sometimes called Inuvialuktun and have in the past sometimes been called Inuktun. In those dialects, the name is sometimes rendered as Inuktitun to reflect dialectal differences in pronunciation. The Inuit language of Quebec is called Inuttitut by its speakers, and often by other people, but this is a minor variation in pronunciation. In Labrador, the language is called Inuttut or, often in official documents, by the more descriptive name Labradorimiutut. Furthermore, Canadians – both Inuit and non-Inuit – sometimes use the word Inuktitut to refer to all Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland.

The phrase "Inuit language" is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all the local variants; or it is used as a descriptive term in publications where readers can't necessarily be expected to know the locally used words. In Nunavut the government groups all dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun under the term Inuktut.

Although many people refer to the Inuit language as Eskimo language, this is a broad term that also includes the Yupik languages, and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See the article on Eskimo for more information on this word.

Classification and history
The Inuit languages constitute a branch of the Eskimo–Aleut language family. They are closely related to the Yupik languages and more remotely to Aleut. These other languages are all spoken in western Alaska, United States, and eastern Chukotka, Russia. They are not discernibly related to other indigenous languages of the Americas or northeast Asia, although there have been some unsubstantiated proposals that they are distantly related to the Uralic languages of western Siberia and northern Europe, in a proposed Uralo-Siberian grouping, or even to the Indo-European languages as part of a Nostratic superphylum. Some had previously lumped them in with the Paleosiberian languages, though that is a geographic rather than a linguistic grouping.

Early forms of the Inuit language are believed to have been spoken by the Thule people, who migrated east from Beringia towards the Arctic Archipelago, which had been occupied by people of the Dorset culture since the beginning of the 2nd millennium. By 1300, the Inuit and their language had reached western Greenland, and finally east Greenland roughly at the same time the Viking colonies in southern Greenland disappeared. It is generally believed that it was during this centuries-long eastward migration that the Inuit language became distinct from the Yupik languages spoken in Western Alaska and Chukotka.

Until 1902, a possible enclave of the Dorset, the Sadlermiut (in modern Inuktitut spelling Sallirmiut), existed on Southampton Island. Almost nothing is known about their language, but the few eyewitness accounts tell of them speaking a "strange dialect". This suggests that they also spoke an Inuit language, but one quite distinct from the forms spoken in Canada today.

The Yupik and Inuit languages are very similar syntactically and morphologically. Their common origin can be seen in a number of cognates:

The western Alaskan variants retain a large number of features present in proto-Inuit language and in Yup'ik, enough so that they might be classed as Yup'ik languages if they were viewed in isolation from the larger Inuit world.

Geographic distribution and variants

The Inuit languages are a fairly closely linked set of languages which can be broken up using a number of different criteria. Traditionally, Inuit describe dialect differences by means of place names to describe local idiosyncrasies in language: The dialect of Igloolik versus the dialect of Iqaluit, for example. However, political and sociological divisions are increasingly the principal criteria for describing different variants of the Inuit languages because of their links to different writing systems, literary traditions, schools, media sources and borrowed vocabulary. This makes any partition of the Inuit language somewhat problematic. This article will use labels that try to synthesise linguistic, sociolinguistic and political considerations in splitting up the Inuit dialect spectrum. This scheme is not the only one used or necessarily one used by Inuit themselves, but its labels do try to reflect the usages most seen in popular and technical literature.

In addition to the territories listed below, some 7,000 Greenlandic speakers are reported to live in mainland Denmark, and according to the 2001 census roughly 200 self-reported Inuktitut native speakers regularly live in parts of Canada which are outside traditional Inuit lands.

Alaska
Of the roughly 13,000 Alaskan Iñupiat, as few as 3000 may still be able to speak the Iñupiaq, with most of them over the age of 40. Alaskan Inupiat speak three distinct dialects, which have difficult mutual intelligibility:

 * Qawiaraq is spoken on the southern side of the Seward Peninsula and the Norton Sound area. In the past it was spoken in Chukotka, particularly Big Diomede island, but appears to have vanished in Russian areas through assimilation into Yupik, Chukchi and Russian-speaking communities. It is radically different in phonology from other Inuit language variants.
 * Inupiatun (North Slope Iñupiaq) is spoken on the Alaska North Slope and in the Kotzebue Sound area.
 * Malimiutun or Malimiut Inupiatun, which are the variants of the Kotzebue Sound area and the northwest of Alaska.

Canada
The Inuit languages are official in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (the dominant language in the latter); have a high level of official support in Nunavik, a semi-autonomous portion of Quebec; and are still spoken in some parts of Labrador. Generally, Canadians refer to all dialects spoken in Canada as Inuktitut, but the terms Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun, and Inuttut (also called Nunatsiavummiutut, Labradorimiutut or Inuttitut) have some currency in referring to the variants of specific areas.

Western Canadian Inuit

 * Inuvialuktun (from west to east)
 * Uummarmiutun (Canadian Iñupiaq)
 * Siglitun (Sallirmiutun)
 * Inuinnaqtun
 * Natsilingmiutut
 * Kivallirmiutut (Kivalliq)
 * Aivilingmiutut (Ailivik)
 * Iglulingmiut (Qikiqtaaluk Uannanganii)

Eastern Canadian Inuit

 * Inuktitut
 * Qikiqtaaluk Nigiani
 * Nunavimmiututut
 * Inuttitut (Nunatsiavummiut)

Greenland
Greenland counts approximately 50,000 speakers of the Inuit languages, over 90% of whom speak west Greenlandic dialects at home.
 * Kalaallisut, Greenlandic in English, is the standard dialect and official language of Greenland. This standard national language has been taught to all Greenlanders since schools were established, regardless of their native dialect. It reflects almost exclusively the language of western Greenland and has borrowed a great deal of vocabulary from Danish (in contrast the Canadian and Alaskan Inuit languages have tended to borrow from English, French or Russian). It is written using the Latin script. The dialect of the Upernavik area in northwest Greenland is somewhat different in phonology from the standard dialect.
 * Tunumiit oraasiat, the Tunumiit dialect (or Tunumiisut in Greenlandic, often East Greenlandic in other languages), is the dialect of eastern Greenland. It differs sharply from other Inuit language variants and has roughly 3000 speakers according to Ethnologue.
 * Inuktun (Or Avanersuarmiutut in Greenlandic) is the dialect of the area around Qaanaaq in northern Greenland. It is sometimes called the Thule dialect or North Greenlandic. This area is the northernmost settlement area of the Inuit and has a relatively small number of speakers. It is reputed to be fairly close to the North Baffin dialect, since a group of migratory Inuit from Baffin Island settled in the area during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It counts under 1000 speakers according to Ethnologue.

Greenlandic was strongly supported by the Danish Christian mission (conducted by the Danish state church) in Greenland. Several major dictionaries were created, beginning with Poul Egedes's Dictionarium Grönlandico-danico-latinum (1750) and culminating with Samuel Kleinschmidt's (1871) "Den grønlandske ordbog" (Transl. "The Greenlandic Dictionary"), which contained a Greenlandic grammatical system that has formed the basis of modern Greenlandic grammar. Together with the fact that until 1925 Danish was not taught in the public schools, these policies had the consequence that Greenlandic has always and continues to enjoy a very strong position in Greenland, both as a spoken as well as written language.

Phonology and phonetics
Eastern Canadian Inuit language variants have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short).

Consonants are arranged with five places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular; and three manners of articulation: voiceless stops, voiced continuants, and nasals, as well as two additional sounds—voiceless fricatives. The Alaskan dialects have an additional manner of articulation, the retroflex, which was present in proto-Inuit language. Retroflexes have disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects. In Natsilingmiutut, the voiced palatal stop derives from a former retroflex.

Almost all Inuit language variants have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. The only exceptions are at the extreme edges of the Inuit world: parts of Greenland, and in western Alaska.

Morphology and syntax
The Inuit languages, like other Eskimo–Aleut languages, have very rich morphological systems in which a succession of different morphemes are added to root words (like verb endings in European languages) to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language) All Inuit words begin with a root morpheme to which other morphemes are suffixed. The language has hundreds of distinct suffixes, in some dialects as many as 700. Fortunately for learners, the language has a highly regular morphology. Although the rules are sometimes very complicated, they do not have exceptions in the sense that English and other Indo-European languages do.

This system makes words very long, and potentially unique. For example, in central Nunavut Inuktitut:

tusaa- -tsiaq- -junnaq- -nngit- -tualuu- -junga

{to hear} well {be able to} not {very much} 1SG.PRES.IND.NSP

I cannot hear very well.

This sort of word construction is pervasive in the Inuit languages and makes them very unlike English. In one large Canadian corpus – the Nunavut Hansard – 92% of all words appear only once, in contrast to a small percentage in most English corpora of similar size. This makes the application of Zipf's law quite difficult in the Inuit language. Furthermore, the notion of a part of speech can be somewhat complicated in the Inuit languages. Fully inflected verbs can be interpreted as nouns. The word ilisaijuq can be interpreted as a fully inflected verb: "he studies", but can also be interpreted as a noun: "student". That said, the meaning is probably obvious to a fluent speaker, when put in context.

The morphology and syntax of the Inuit languages vary to some degree between dialects, and the article Inuit grammar describes primarily central Nunavut dialects, but the basic principles will generally apply to all of them and to some degree to Yupik languages as well.

Toponymy and names
Both the names of places and people tend to be highly prosaic when translated. Iqaluit, for example, is simply the plural of the noun iqaluk "fish" ("Arctic char", "salmon" or "trout" depending on dialect ). Igloolik (Iglulik) means place with houses, a word that could be interpreted as simply town; Inuvik is place of people; Baffin Island, Qikiqtaaluk in Inuktitut, translates approximately to "big island".

Although practically all Inuit have legal names based on southern naming traditions, at home and among themselves they still use native naming traditions. There too, names tend to consist of highly prosaic words. The Inuit traditionally believed that by adopting the name of a dead person or a class of things, they could take some of their characteristics or powers, and enjoy a part of their identity. (This is why they were always very willing to accept European names: they believed that this made them equal to the Europeans.)

Common native names in Canada include "Ujarak" (rock), "Nuvuk" (headland), "Nasak" (hat, or hood), "Tupiq" or "Tupeq" in Kalaallisut (tent), and "Qajaq" (kayak). Inuit also use animal names, traditionally believing that by using those names, they took on some of the characteristics of that animal: "Nanuq" or "Nanoq" in Kalaallisut (polar-bear), "Uqalik" or "Ukaleq" in Kalaallisut (Arctic hare), and "Tiriaq" or "Teriaq" in Kalaallisut (mouse) are favourites. In other cases, Inuit are named after dead people or people in traditional tales, by naming them after anatomical traits those people are believed to have had. Examples include "Itigaituk" (has no feet), "Anana" or "Anaana" (mother), "Piujuq" (beautiful) and "Tulimak" (rib). Inuit may have any number of names, given by parents and other community members.

Disc numbers and Project Surname
In the 1920s, changes in lifestyle and serious epidemics like tuberculosis made the government of Canada interested in tracking the Inuit of Canada's Arctic. Traditionally Inuit names reflect what is important in Inuit culture: environment, landscape, seascape, family, animals, birds, spirits. However these traditional names were difficult for non-Inuit to parse. Also, the agglutinative nature of Inuit language meant that names seemed long and were difficult for southern bureaucrats and missionaries to pronounce.

Thus, in the 1940s, the Inuit were given disc numbers, recorded on a special leather ID tag, like a dog tag. They were required to keep the tag with them always. (Some tags are now so old and worn that the number is polished out.) The numbers were assigned with a letter prefix that indicated location (E = east), community, and then the order in which the census-taker saw the individual. In some ways this state renaming was abetted by the churches and missionaries, who viewed the traditional names and their calls to power as related to shamanism and paganism.

They encouraged people to take Christian names. So a young woman who was known to her relatives as "Lutaaq, Pilitaq, Palluq, or Inusiq" and had been baptised as "Annie" was under this system to become Annie E7-121. People adopted the number-names, their family members' numbers, etc., and learned all the region codes (like knowing a telephone area code).

Until Inuit began studying in the south, many did not know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. Then in 1969, the government started Project Surname, headed by Abe Okpik, to replace number-names with patrilineal "family surnames".

Words for snow
A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for snow. This is not accurate, and results from a misunderstanding of the nature of polysynthetic languages. In fact, the Inuit have only a few base roots for snow: 'qanniq-' ('qanik-' in some dialects), which is used most often like the verb to snow, and 'aput', which means snow as a substance. Parts of speech work very differently in the Inuit language than in English, so these definitions are somewhat misleading.

The Inuit languages can form very long words by adding more and more descriptive affixes to words. Those affixes may modify the syntactic and semantic properties of the base word, or may add qualifiers to it in much the same way that English uses adjectives or prepositional phrases to qualify nouns (e.g. "falling snow", "blowing snow", "snow on the ground", "snow drift", etc.)

The "fact" that there are many Inuit words for snow has been put forward so often that it has become a journalistic cliché.

Numbers
The Inuit use a base-20 counting system.

Writing
Because the Inuit languages are spread over such a large area, divided between different nations and political units and originally reached by Europeans of different origins at different times, there is no uniform way of writing the Inuit language.

Currently there are six "standard" ways to write the languages:
 * 1) ICI Standard Syllabics (Canada)
 * 2) ICI Standard Latin script (Canada)
 * 3) Nunatsiavut Latin script (Canada)
 * 4) Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait (Canada)
 * 5) Alaskan Inupiaq script (US)
 * 6) Greenlandic

Though all except the syllabics use a Latin-based script, the alphabets differ in use of diacritics, non-Latin letters, etc. Most Inuktitut in Nunavut and Nunavik is written using a script called Inuktitut syllabics, based on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. The western part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories use a Latin-script alphabet usually identified as Inuinnaqtun. In Alaska, another Latin alphabet is used, with some characters using diacritics. Nunatsiavut uses an alphabet devised with German-speaking Moravian missionaries, which includes the letter kra. Greenland's Latin alphabet was originally much like the one used in Nunatsiavut, but underwent a spelling reform in 1973 to bring the orthography in line with changes in pronunciation and better reflect the phonemic inventory of the language.

Canadian syllabics
Inuktitut syllabics, used in Canada, is based on Cree syllabics, devised by the missionary James Evans based on Devanagari, a Brahmi script. The present form of Canadian Inuktitut syllabics was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s.

Though presented in syllabic form, syllabics is not a true syllabary but an abugida, since syllables starting with the same consonant are written with graphically similar letters.

All of the characters needed for Inuktitut syllabics are available in the Unicode character repertoire, in the blocks Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.

Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait
The Canadian national organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami adopted Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait, a unified orthography for all varieties of Inuktitut, in September 2019. It is based on the Latin alphabet without diacritics.

Dictionaries and lexica

 * Interactive IñupiaQ Dictionary
 * Oqaasileriffik Language database
 * (133 KiB)
 * Textbook

Webpages

 * A Brief History of Inuktitut Writing Culture
 * Inuktitut Syllabarium
 * Our Language, Our Selves
 * Alt.folklore.urban on Eskimo words for snow.
 * Report of the third Danish Chukotka expedition with information on the Chukotka Yupik

Unicode support

 * Code Charts

title: Inuit languages


text:
Talk:Inuit languages

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eshood18.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Inuit language + Grammar
I think these articles give a partly false impression of unity among the inuit languages. At the very least the articles overstate the similarity between the languages and give too little space to describe the quite common view that they are not dialects of one "Inuit language" but rather many separate but closely related languages - in effect a dialect continuum.·Maunus· ƛ · 15:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Transcription at tautirut?
The associated WikiProjects don't get much traffic, so thought is safer to ask here: this dictionary entry shows the word for tautirut, an Inuit fiddle. Is there anyone familiar with this syllabary and the Unicode needed to add this native spelling to the lede of the article? Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:52, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Inuit languages. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051027152937/http://www.oqaasileriffik.gl/cgi-bin/katersat.cgi?lang=eng to http://www.oqaasileriffik.gl/cgi-bin/katersat.cgi?lang=eng
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050930090412/http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/fb08/IHE/download/InukMorphList.pdf to http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/fb08/IHE/download/InukMorphList.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070926220722/http://www.itk.ca/communications/technology-syllabics.php to http://www.itk.ca/communications/technology-syllabics.php
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050802084421/http://tafkac.org/language/eskimo_words_for_snow_derby.html to http://tafkac.org/language/eskimo_words_for_snow_derby.html

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"I can't hear very well" / "Tusaatsiarunnanngittualuujunga"
This example sentence is exceptionally common and could to come with a polite mention Inuit speakers have some of the highest rates of hearing loss in the world - children in some studies have shown rates of middle ear damage approaching 54%.|source 121.45.171.107 (talk) 17:44, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

 * The link doesn't work and anything about hearing loss should be in the Inuit article and not here. I don't think that Tusaatsiarunnanngittualuujunga is very common but is in Inuit grammar. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 19:35, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Article issues
Being a "Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment" does not offer any special class. In fact, with "429 editors, 102 watchers, and 6,763 pageviews apparently in the last 13 months, one would figure it would be more closely watched. It is a B-class article (of interest to 9 projects) with two tags. One is for source-related (since August 2013) reference problems. This fails #1 of the assessment criteria and is at risk of being demoted.   I forgot to sign this (17:41, May 18, 2021), and apparently, a bot didn't intercede. Otr500 (talk) 02:44, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

92 % of the words in the Nunavut Hansard appearing only once
What is the source for that claim? I've been trying to find it, but I've never found a valid source, only the claim itself (both English- and German-language Wikipedia) and people copypasting this claim into their own article. Огненный ангел (talk) 13:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

authors: Огненный ангел

title: Talk:Inuit languages