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.
In prehistoric times, successive waves of Paleo-Inuit (Paleo-Eskimo) peoples inhabited the island. The early 10th century then saw Norse arrivals, led by Erik the Red, who, exiled from Iceland – not to be confused with Greenland – christened the island in the hope that a favourable name like “Grœnland” would attract settlers; these early Norse settlements disappeared by the early 15th century.
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.
Another distinct variety is East Greenlandic or Tunumiisut. Meanwhile, Northern Greenlandic or Inuktun, of the 18th-century Polar Inuit arrivals, is geographically and linguistically more closely related to eastern Canada’s Inuit varieties.
The word Inuit in English refers to the culturally and linguistically unique group of indigenous peoples of northern Alaska, and, especially, of Arctic Canada and Greenland. In Inuit languages, however, inuit means “human beings, the people”, plural of inuk “person”.
Several other English words have origins in the Eskimo-Aleut languages.
The igloo – a popular introduction to the letter “I” in children’s alphabet books – derives from iclo, meaning “house, building (of any kind)” in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a principal Inuit language of Canada. Its meaning narrowed in English to refer specifically to the characteristic dome-shaped Inuit shelter, constructed of blocks cut from snow.
Similarly, kayak came from Eastern Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit languages’ qayaq, referring to a “man’s boat, hunter’s boat”. Borrowed into English in the mid-1700s, its meaning broadened to a small, narrow boat propelled by its seated occupants using a double-bladed paddle, used in the now-popular water activity on lakes, rivers and coastal waters around the world.
From Greenlandic annoraaq, referring to fur overalls, from the Proto-Inuit word *atnuʀaaq for “clothing”, English got anorak in the 1870s, for a warm, waterproof, hip-length hooded jacket.
Already in the early 1600s, the word parka – a long, knee-length water- and windproof hooded jacket, often fur-lined – was borrowed from Aleut parka and Russian па́рка, ultimately from the Samoyedic language of northern Russia’s Nenets people, meaning “animal skin, skin coat”, as such clothing was traditionally made from caribou or seal skin.
Language has been a vital emblem of identity as Greenland advanced to political autonomy. Since the 17th century Dano-Norwegian recolonisation and 1953 integration into the Danish state, the Danish language has been dominant in education and other official domains.
Following Greenland’s home rule establishment in 1979 and self-government in 2009, however, the position of Kalaallisut strengthened, becoming the territory’s only official language – comprising a unique case of an indigenous language of the Americas recognised as the sole official language of a self-governing territory.
Language continues to constitute significant symbolic support: French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking alongside Denmark’s and Greenland’s prime ministers this week, explicitly used Greenlandic to emphasise that “Greenlanders will decide their future”.
