So far, we have been using simple endings with verbs:
| takuvunga |
| I see. |
-vunga indicates the subject of the sentence, or who does the seeing. It doesn’t indicate the object of the sentence, or what we see.
In English, if we want to talk about what we see, we would add a pronoun to the sentence to indicate an object:
| I see her. |
In Inuktitut, we use verb endings that indicate both the subject and the object of the sentence. These are known as transitive verb endings.
| takuvunga (basic verb ending) | I see. |
| takuvaga (transitive verb ending) | I see her. |
| malivuk | She is following. |
| malijânga | She is following me. |
Here are the simplest forms of these transitive verb endings:
| Where I am doing the action: | |
| takujagit | I see you. |
| takujaga | I see him / her / it. |
| Where you are doing the action: | |
| takujamma | You see me. |
| takujait | You see him / her / it. |
| Where he/she/it is doing the action: | |
| takujânga | She sees me. |
| takujâtit | She sees you. |
| takujanga | She sees him. |
The basic form of these affixes begin with j- when added to a root ending in a vowel. With some verbs, you may hear some speakers use verb roots ending in a t: and following them with a verb ending that starts with t-:
| malit + taga = | |
| malittaga | I am following him. |
| ikajut + tânga = | |
| ikajuttânga | She is helping me. |