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In alphabetical order they are: Ġ ġ Ł ł Ḷ l ̣ Ł̣ ł ̣Ŋ ŋ Ñ ñ
In most instances special “InuFonts” (download 100 K) must be installed along with international keyboard drivers in order to display or insert these characters in a document. InuFonts have proven invaluable to the Inuit in helping them digitally record history, heritage, and culture while being able to communicate in their native language locally.
It is the goal of the Alaska Native Education Program to share the Inuit’s wealth of knowledge globally without the need of special fonts, downloads, platform or custom configured computers.
Unicode
Until recently most computers used fonts that contain a maximum of 256 characters. The first 128 characters (the ASCII characters) include punctuation marks, numbers and the letters A-Z in both caps and lowercase. In North America, the United Kingdom, and the rest of the English-speaking world the second set of 128 characters comprises more punctuation marks, currency symbols and a lot of accented letters.
If you live in a country (or region) that uses a different alphabet the first 128 characters will be the same, but many of the places in the second set of 128 are derived elsewhere.
Now that documents are often transferred electronically instead of on paper, reading documents from another country (or region) with a different alphabet, is becoming more of a problem.
The solution is to leave behind the assortment of 8-bit fonts with their limit of 256 characters, where the same character number can represent a different character in different alphabets, and move to a system that assigns a unique number to each character in each of the major languages of the world. Such a system has been developed and is known as Unicode. It is intended for use on all computer operating systems and even the Internet.
The current version (v 4.0) of the Unicode Standard, developed by the Unicode Consortium, assigns a unique identifier to 96,382 characters, covering most of the world’s written languages.
Inupiaq Unicode Characters
In order to display Inupiaq correctly via the Internet without special downloads, installs, fonts or configurations all twelve identifiers (one for every upper and lower case Inupiaq character) needed to be located from 96,382 possible unique identifiers.
It was found that eight of the twelve characters already existed: Ġ ġ Ł ł Ŋ ŋ Ñ ñ
However, four characters ( Ḷ l ̣Ł̣ ł ̣̣ ) did not previously exist and had to be built from identifiers that offer full characters, part characters and spaces.
Unicode for Northern Alaskan Inupiaq
| Unicode Unique Identifier |
Character |
| 0120 |
Ġ |
|
0121 |
ġ |
|
141 |
Ł |
|
0142 |
ł |
|
004C + 0323 |
Ḷ |
|
006C + 0200A +0323 ̣ |
l |
|
0141 + 0323 ̣ |
Ł |
|
0141 + 0200A + 0323 ̣ |
ł |
|
00D1 |
Ñ |
|
00F1 |
ñ |
|
014A |
Ŋ |
|
014b |
ŋ |
Once these identifiers were found (identified) the next step could be taken.
Content Management System and Cold Fusion 6.1
The Alaska Native Education Program uses a content management system for their website called AssetNow.
Definition: a Content Management System (CMS) is a system that manages the content components of a Web site. Content is usually stored in a database where it can be edited, deleted and updated.
The most recent release of Cold Fusion included database drivers that support Unicode in Microsoft Access. The Alaska Native Education Program worked with Johan Steenkamp (author of AssetNow) to modify AssetNow to incorporate these unique Inupiaq identifiers in the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor.
The result is being able to copy/paste Inupiaq into a new or existing webpage or create these unique Inupiaq characters on the fly.
Summary
In order for the young Inupiaq people to feel like Inupiaq is a real language, like English, it needs to be seen, heard, and utilized everywhere, and that includes the use of computers and especially the Internet.
The Alaska Native Education Program is proud to bring Northern Alaskan Inupiaq in its most simple and easy to implement form to the World Wide Web. Inupiaq can now be viewed using any computer worldwide without the hassle of special fonts, keyboard drivers or custom configurations.
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