Harper gaffe - calling the capital of Nunavut "Iqualuit" ("people with unwashed bums")

19 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2009-08-18 20:27

martin dufresne

(...) A news release sent out Monday outlined Prime Minister Stephen Harper's itinerary as he began a five-day Arctic tour.

The release repeatedly spelled the capital of Nunavut as Iqualuit - rather than Iqaluit, which means "many fish" in the Inuktitut language.

The extra "u" makes a big difference.

"It means people with unwiped bums," said Sandra Inutiq of the office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut.

"It's not exactly a nice term."

Inutiq said people who speak Inuktitut are sometimes offended or even angered when non-northerners incorrectly spell the name of their capital.
(...)

"As long as they let us savage their environment with climate warning and oil&gas development, not to mention militarize their waters, they can call themselves what they damn want," muttered the PM off the record.

Tue, 2009-08-18 20:32

Tommy_Paine

Well, I'd say we have a new nickname for the Tories.

The Iqualuit Party.

Tue, 2009-08-18 20:45

Ktown

martin dufresne wrote:

Canadian Press story

"As long as they let us savage their environment with climate warning and oil&gas development, not to mention militarize their waters, they can call themselves what they damn want," muttered the PM off the record.

I could not find this quote in the article. Could Martin be lying?

Tue, 2009-08-18 20:55

NorthReport

Ktown, you're quite the comedian, eh.

Tue, 2009-08-18 20:58

Angella

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was a joke.

Tue, 2009-08-18 21:25

remind

Wow, interesting to see how this unfolds, as he has been there every summer for 3 years and this should not have happened.

Where is Ryan Sparrow when you need him to step down?

Wed, 2009-08-19 04:22

Daniel Grice

Harper can't blame this one on the Liberals...

Wed, 2009-08-19 06:51

marzo

It's weird that this small spelling mistake in the name of Iqaluit can result in such completely different meaning. "Place of many fish" becomes "place of dirty assholes".

Since the Inuktitut language has recently become adapted to the Roman alphabet, I wonder why it is not spelled phonetically, the way it sounds. If it were, it would be spelled 'Ikaluit' and that would avoid the confusion which results from 'Q' which in English is always followed by a 'u' to make a 'kw' sound.

English is a confusing language with inconsistent rules. If the English language made sense we would spell 'laff' instead of 'laugh', 'thot' instead of 'thought', and 'goast' instead of 'ghost'.