"IUR is used by less than 40 people as their first language. Some of these people use more and more ASL... Furthermore, most of these deaf adults who use IUR as their main means of communication mainly use the language with hearing signers, who are second language users. Only on rare occasions is IUR used between two deaf native signers. And as no deaf children acquire IUR as their native language, the status of the language is highly endangered."

"About two-thirds of the deaf Inuit use American Sign Language (ASL) or Manually Coded English (MCE), while the remaining one-third use IUR. Also, a few deaf Inuit are bilingual in ASL and IUR... IUR is only used as a primary language by those deaf individuals who have not been to school, or only attended school for a short period."