Page "Eskimo" Paragraph 23

Inuit languages comprise a dialect continuum, or dialect chain, that stretches from Unalakleet and Norton Sound in Alaska, across northern Alaska and Canada, and east all the way to Greenland.

Changes from western ( Inupiaq ) to eastern dialects are marked by the dropping of vestigial Yupik-related features, increasing consonant assimilation ( e. g., kumlu, meaning " thumb ," changes to kuvlu, changes to kublu, changes to kulluk, changes to kulluq ), and increased consonant lengthening, and lexical change.

Thus, speakers of two adjacent Inuit dialects would usually be able to understand one another, but speakers from dialects distant from each other on the dialect continuum would have difficulty understanding one another.

Seward Peninsula dialects in Western Alaska, where much of the Inupiat culture has only been in place for perhaps less than 500 years, are greatly affected by phonological influence from the Yupik languages.

Eastern Greenlandic, at the opposite end of the Inuit range has had significant word replacement due to a unique form of ritual name avoidance.