How can neighboring Inuit dialects be understood while distant Inuit dialects may not be?

The Inuit language is characterized as a dialect continuum, which explains why neighboring groups can understand one another while those separated by great distances may not.1

In a dialect continuum, the language exists as a series of intergrading dialects that stretch across thousands of miles, from eastern Greenland to northern Alaska. Because these dialects shift gradually from one community to the next, neighboring groups share enough linguistic commonalities to maintain mutual intelligibility. However, as one moves further along the continuum, the cumulative linguistic differences increase. Over these vast distances, these incremental changes eventually become significant enough to impede or entirely prevent understanding between groups that are geographically far apart.21