Language Matters | How Greenland’s language is just as invaluable as its minerals, oil and strategic location
Greenlandic has been an emblem of identity as the territory advanced to political autonomy and has given us words like igloo and anorak
In addition to Greenland’s vast deposits of critical minerals, including rare earth elements, its significant oil and natural gas reserves, and strategic security-critical Arctic location – assets now widely familiar since the US threat to annex this autonomous territory of Denmark – Greenland’s language is also invaluable.
The last Inuit arrivals, the Thule, reached Greenland around 1300, having moved slowly eastwards from Alaska since their culture’s development around 1000. Three-quarters of today’s Greenlandic Inuit – who comprise 90 per cent of Greenland’s 56,000-strong population – are descended from the Thule.
The Greenlandic language belongs to the Eskaleut or Eskimo-Aleut language family, whose languages are indigenous to the northern regions of the North American continent and northeastern Asia.
The Eskaleut language family branches, on the one hand, into Aleut, an endangered indigenous language in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, and on the other, into the Eskimo languages. The Eskimo languages include Yupik languages, found in Russia, Alaska and Saint Lawrence Island, and Inuit-Inupiaq languages, found in Canada, Alaska and Greenland.
Greenlandic encompasses several dialects. With the most populous area being the island’s western region, the dialect of West Greenlandic became the de facto standard language. Its endonym, Kalaallisut, meaning “the language of the Kalaallit” – the Kalaallit being the western Greenlandic Inuit people – is often used as a cover term for the Greenlandic language.