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…”

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