Nomenclature
The traditional language of the Inuit is a system of closely interrelated dialects that are not readily comprehensible from one end of the Inuit world to the other, and some people do not think of it as a single language but rather as a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking the Inuit language into specific member languages, since it forms a continuum of close dialects. Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely its neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level.
As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for its own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating a great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it.
In Greenland the official form of Inuit language, and the official language of the state, is called Kalaallisut. In other languages, it is often called Greenlandic or some cognate term. The Eskimo languages of Alaska are called Inupiatun, but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them Qawiaraq, or for some dialects, Bering Straits Inupiatun.
In Canada, the word Inuktitut is routinely used to refer to all Canadian variants of the Inuit traditional language, and it is under that name that it is recognised as one of the official languages of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. However, one of the variants of western Nunavut is called Inuinnaqtun to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while the variants of the Northwest Territories are sometimes called Inuvialuktun and have in the past sometimes been called Inuktun. In those dialects, the name is sometimes rendered as Inuktitun to reflect dialectal differences in pronunciation. The Inuit language of Quebec is called Inuttitut by its speakers, and often by other people, but this is a minor variation in pronunciation. In Labrador, the language is called Inuttut or, often in official documents, by the more descriptive name Labradorimiutut. Furthermore, Canadians – both Inuit and non-Inuit – sometimes use the word Inuktitut to refer to all of the Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland.
The phrase "Inuit language" is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all the local variants; or it is used as a descriptive term in publications where readers can't necessarily be expected to know the locally used words. But, this means that while you can call the French language French, you cannot call the Inuit language Inuit. Saying "Peter speaks Inuit" is a very strange usage that most people who are familiar with the Inuit language would recognise as suspect, comparable to asserting that Hispanics must speak "Hispanic". The word Inuit is generally reserved for the ethnic group, both from its Inuit language meaning – it refers specifically to a group of people – and in the way the word has been adopted in English.
Although many people refer to the Inuit language as Eskimo language, this is a broad term that also includes Yupik, and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See the article on Eskimo for more information on this word.
Read more about this topic: Inuit Languages