Inupiaq word of the day spoken on Facebook

Published on July 22nd, 2010

By VICTORIA BARBER

When Anniagruk Mary Sage learns Inupiaq, she wants to share it with friends. To reach a lot of her friends quickly, she's using Facebook.

It's been almost a year since Sage launched the Facebook page Inupiaq Word of the Day, and since then it's reached over 2,000 people with updates on how to say everything from "Suvat?" (what's up?) to Suutuqtuna tuttumik ("I am eating caribou soup").

The page caught on almost immediately, Sage said, with about 500 people "friending" it the first day. "We realized there is a strong hunger for knowledge of the Inupiaq language," Sage said.

Sage said she considered creating a language website for awhile, and ended up using Facebook to post vocabulary words as text updates. She soon moved to making short videos of people speaking the words - beginning with her children, who got to pick a word, then introduce and pronounce it.

Soon, Sage was propositioning friends and neighbors to say a word for the videos, building up a sizable collection with guest speakers ranging from young children to established Alaska Native leaders. Some of Sage's speakers have included Willie Hensley, Oliver Leavitt and Etta Pakkak Fournier. After a while, Inupiaq rapper and performance artist Allison Warden contributed her talents to a series of entertaining videos, some featuring conversations with her mother and spanning topics from food to farting ("did you fart?" she asks in Inupiaq).

"And if I don't have guest content, I'll rely on my kids to sing a song, count to 10 or something like that," Sage said.

The combination of modern technology and social networking - as well as the fun, bite-sized style of the videos - make the Inupiaq lessons accessible to a broad audience. Sage makes all her recordings on her iPhone, a process that takes (from recording to Facebook) "about 10 minutes." If Sage is traveling the state or going to a big meeting, such as the AFN convention, she'll take several video clips. Once uploaded, Facebook automatically publishes the clips to the "newsfeed," a list of what's new on Facebook pages a user has expressed interest in.

The same technology that makes Inupiaq Word of the Day popular can also be a stumbling block, however. A few months ago the original Inupiaq Word of the Day page was accidentally deleted, Sage said. She's since posted a new page but it has only a few videos and, since fans may not realize the original page is gone, hasn't approached the popularity of the original.

Sage said a lot of the page's audience has been from outside Alaska, especially among Inupiat who have moved away and are looking for ways to reconnect to their roots.

"It feels like everyone truly is on Facebook," Sage said. "People just love it, it's a fun way to learn."