Inupiaq

Member languages are: North Alaskan Inupiatun (See: [[Inupiatun, North Alaskan]]), Northwest Alaska Inupiatun (See: [[Inupiatun, Northwest Alaska]])

Inupiaq is the collective term for the dialects of Western Eskimo (q.v.) spoken in Alaska and immediately adjacent parts of Northern Canada. There are two major dialect groups, Seward Peninsula Inupiaq (Qawiaraq) and North Alaskan Inupiaq. Seward Peninsula Inupiaq includes the local dialects of the southern Seward Peninsula and Norton Sound area, and of the villages surrounding Bering Strait and on King and Diomede Islands. North Alaskan Inupiaq includes the the Malimiut dialect around Kotzebue Sound and the North Slope dialect spoken along the Arctic Coast as far east as the Mackenzie Delta. The Seward Peninsula and North Alaskan dialect groups differ significantly from each other and a fair amount of experience is required for a speaker of one to understand a speaker of the other. (Golla et al. 2010.)Ethnologue (2013) considers Inupiaq [ipk] a "macrolanguage" which includes: North Alaskan Inupiatun [esi] and Northwest Alaska Inupiatun [esk]. Others do not make this distinction.