Word Up

I have been slowly working my way through The Structure of Inuktitut, a program designed to teach you the basic grammar of the language. The lessons remind me of my undergrad days where I would spend long nights declining and conjugating my way through Ancient Greek and Latin word lists, fun times!

One of the little tricks that everyone picks up when learning a new language is to use word or image associations to help you remember a particular word. Inuktitut has fewer consonants and vowels than English so a lot of the words start looking the same to me. You have to read very carefully. Fortunately, I came up with my first association to help me out for the word ikajuq which means to help. Now, I have never seen an episode of Pokemon in my life but I couldn't help but think about the character Pikachu. So everytime I see the root ikajuq I think Pikachu! I don't know about you, but doesn't he/she/it seem pretty helpful?