In Inuktut, the basic units of meaning are roots, affixes and grammatical endings.
| niri- | to eat |
| aullaq- | to depart; leave town |
| tupiq | tent |
Roots that describe nouns (people, places, animals or objects) sometimes appear on their own:
| nuna | land |
| inuk | an Inuk; a person |
| natsiq | ringed seal |
Generally, though, words are built in Inuktut by attaching affixes and endings to a root.
Here are three simple noun endings:
| -mi | in / at a place |
| -mut | to a place |
| -mit | from a place |
We can add these endings to a noun root to create a word:
| sijjami | at the shoreline |
| sijjamut | to the shoreline |
| sijjamit | from the shoreline |
Verb endings are attached to verb roots that describe actions. Here are three simple verb endings:
| -tunga | I |
| -tutit | you |
| -tuq | she / he / it |
If we add different endings to the same root, we get different meanings:
| aullaqtunga | I am departing. |
| aullaqtutit | You are departing. |
| aullaqtuq | He / she is departing. |
Affixes are pieces of words that appear between the root and the ending. They can never begin a word. Affixes add more information about the noun or verb that is described by the root.
For example -lauq- is a verb affix that indicates that an action happened in the past:
| aullalauqtunga | I departed. |
| aullalauqtutit | You departed. |
| aullalauqtuq | He / she departed. |
In Inuktut, it is possible to build up very long words by adding a series of affixes between the root and the ending. We can end up with single words that would take an entire sentence to say in English:
qangatasuukkuvimmuuriaqalaaqtunga I’ll have to go to the airport.