-juq (affix)

THE SUBJECT OF THE VERB

In English, we often use pronouns to tell us who we are talking about in a sentence:

I ate. Who are you? He left yesterday.

In Inuktitut, we indicate who we are talking about by using an affix that appears (usually) at the very end of the word:

nirijunga I eat

To make pronunciation easier, when -junga is added to a stem ending in a consonant, the j changes to t:

uqalimaaqtunga I read

 

Here is a list of the verb endings that indicate who the subject is:

nirijunga I eat
nirijutit you eat
nirijuq he / she eats
nirijuguk the two of us eat
nirijugut we (three or more) eat
nirijusik you two eat
nirijusi you (three or more) eat
nirijuuk the two of them eat
nirijut they (three or more) eat
Rembember: the j of all of these endings changes to t when they are added to a root that ends in a consonant.

isiqtuq he enters