29.7.09

..."The Language of Health Ought to be Inclusionary"...


Inuktitut can help communicate important unifying concepts in healthcare that may elude us in English. I was reminded of the bonding power of Inuktitut by our new kisaut ("anchor" or "oneness") fellow, Jen McCabe Gorman. Inuktitut is a language of inclusiveness. English can be divisive. Inuktitut is an aggregating language - pronouns, verb tense, and emotional cadence get mixed together to form one block or phrase. And the language of health ought to be inclusionary.

From Neil Seeman's essay: "How Do You Say "Health" in Inuktitut?" Longwoods Publishing

If you're working on NLP for healthcare, semantic web technologies, or creating new ontologies for PHRs, please consider 'meaningful use' of inclusionary language a vital design element.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

1 comment:

Bryce Wesley Merkl said...

Here's another great site in Inuktitut that I think you might enjoy: Inuktitut wiki browser