Spotted by Bretislav in the Czech Republic, this is from the Canadian National Post: “A spelling error on several hundred government envelopes mailed from Nunavut’s capital last week added an extra ‘u’ to the spelling of Iqaluit, changing the meaning of the word from “the place of many fish” to “dirty bum.”.

”About 200 envelopes containing T4 income tax slips were marked with a stamp that mistakenly referred to Iqaluit as Iqualuit. [A linguist], who consulted with a fluent Inuktitut speaker … said whoever made the stamp appears to have used a prefix meaning faeces adhering to the anus. Seventy-one percent of Nunavut’s population speak Inuktitut… yet the public service does its work primarily in English because bureaucrats from outside the territory hold key positions in government. Government translators trying to turn English documents into Inuktitut reports, posters and street signs are overworked and the final products are often rife with spelling errors and literal translations that make no sense to the Inuit majority…”

Discus this article and give feedback in our online forum