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35-433: The municipality consists of former municipalities of eastern and southwestern Greenland, each named after the largest settlement at the time of formation: The municipality is located in south-central and eastern Greenland, with an area of 531,900 km (205,367.7 sq mi). As of 2018, it is the largest municipality in the world by area, following the split of the former Qaasuitsup . As of January 2013 its population

70-635: A 100% literacy rate. As the Western Greenlandic standard has become dominant, a UNESCO report has labelled the other dialects as endangered, and measures are now being considered to protect the Eastern Greenlandic dialect. Kalaallisut and the other Greenlandic dialects belong to the Eskimo–Aleut family and are closely related to the Inuit languages of Canada and Alaska . Illustration 1 shows

105-563: A scale unknown anywhere else. In the northwest, the municipality is bordered by the Qeqqata municipality, and further north by the Qeqertalik and Avannaata municipalities. The latter two borders however run north–south through the center ( 45° West meridian ) of the Greenland ice sheet ( Greenlandic : Sermersuaq ) − and as such are free of traffic. In the north the municipality is bordered by

140-482: Is Tunumiit oraasiat , or East Greenlandic. The language of the Inughuit (Thule Inuit) of Greenland, Inuktun or Polar Eskimo, is a recent arrival and a dialect of Inuktitut . Greenlandic is a polysynthetic language that allows the creation of long words by stringing together roots and suffixes . The language's morphosyntactic alignment is ergative , treating both the argument (subject) of an intransitive verb and

175-567: Is ergative-absolutive , but verbal morphology follows a nominative-accusative pattern and pronouns are syntactically neutral. The language distinguishes four persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th or 3rd reflexive (see Obviation and switch-reference ); two numbers (singular and plural but no dual , unlike Inuktitut); eight moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative, optative, conditional, causative, contemporative and participial) and eight cases (absolutive, ergative, equative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative and prolative). Greenlandic (including

210-535: Is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada such as Inuktitut . It is the most widely spoken Eskimo–Aleut language. In June 2009, the government of Greenland, the Naalakkersuisut , made Greenlandic the sole official language of the autonomous territory, to strengthen it in the face of competition from the colonial language , Danish . The main variety is Kalaallisut , or West Greenlandic. The second variety

245-435: Is contrastive only in loanwords . The alveolar stop /t/ is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] before the high front vowel /i/ . Often, Danish loanwords containing ⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example ⟨baaja⟩ [paːja] "beer" and ⟨Guuti⟩ [kuːtˢi] "God"; these are pronounced exactly as /p t k/ . The broad outline of

280-525: Is fronted to [ʉ] between two coronal consonants. The allophonic lowering of /i/ and /u/ before uvular consonants is shown in the modern orthography by writing /i/ and /u/ as ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ respectively before ⟨q⟩ and ⟨r⟩ . For example: The palatal sibilant [ʃ] has merged with [s] in all dialects except those of the Sisimiut – Maniitsoq – Nuuk – Paamiut area. The labiodental fricative [f]

315-405: Is one of two municipalities straddling the western and eastern sides of the island, but is the only municipality where settlements on both coasts are connected via scheduled flights from Nuuk Airport to Kulusuk Airport and Nerlerit Inaat Airport and reverse, operated year-round by Air Greenland . There are also local flights between Nuuk and Paamiut Airport on the west coast. Kalaallisut ,

350-485: Is spoken in the towns and settlements of the western and northwestern coasts. Inuktun is also spoken in and around Qaanaaq. This Greenland location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Greenlandic language Greenlandic (Greenlandic: kalaallisut [kalaːɬːisʉt] ; Danish : grønlandsk [ˈkʁɶnˌlænˀsk] ) is an Eskimo–Aleut language with about 57,000 speakers, mostly Greenlandic Inuit in Greenland . It

385-421: Is the most innovative by further simplifying its structure by eliding /n/ . The Greenlandic three- vowel system, composed of /i/ , /u/ , and /a/ , is typical for an Eskimo–Aleut language. Double vowels are analyzed as two morae and so they are phonologically a vowel sequence and not a long vowel. They are also orthographically written as two vowels. There is only one diphthong, /ai/ , which occurs only at

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420-466: Is the most innovative of the Greenlandic dialects since it has assimilated consonant clusters and vowel sequences more than West Greenlandic. Kalaallisut is further divided into four subdialects. One that is spoken around Upernavik has certain similarities to East Greenlandic, possibly because of a previous migration from eastern Greenland. A second dialect is spoken in the region of Uummannaq and

455-613: Is the policy of "Greenlandization" of Greenlandic society that began with the home rule agreement of 1979. The policy has worked to reverse the former trend towards marginalization of the Greenlandic language by making it the official language of education. The fact that Greenlandic has become the only language used in primary schooling means that monolingual Danish-speaking parents in Greenland are now raising children bilingual in Danish and Greenlandic. Greenlandic now has several dedicated news media:

490-603: The Disko Bay . The standard language is based on the central Kalaallisut dialect spoken in Sisimiut in the north, around Nuuk and as far south as Maniitsoq . Southern Kalaallisut is spoken around Narsaq and Qaqortoq in the south. Table 1 shows the differences in the pronunciation of the word for "humans" in the two main dialects and Inuktun. It can be seen that Inuktun is the most conservative by maintaining ⟨gh⟩ , which has been elided in Kalaallisut, and Tunumiisut

525-783: The Northeast Greenland National Park beyond Cape Biot , at the northern end of Fleming Fjord . In the east, near the settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit , the municipal shores straddle the Kangertittivaq fjord, which opens to the cold Greenland Sea . The southeastern shores are bordered by the Anorituup Kangerlua fjord of the Irminger Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean . Sermersooq's municipal council consists of 19 members, elected every four years. Sermersooq

560-508: The number and person of its subject and object . Both nouns and verbs have complex derivational morphology. The basic word order in transitive clauses is subject–object–verb . The subordination of clauses uses special subordinate moods. A so-called fourth-person category enables switch-reference between main clauses and subordinate clauses with different subjects. Greenlandic is notable for its lack of grammatical tense ; temporal relations are expressed normally by context but also by

595-472: The object of a transitive verb in one way, but the subject of a transitive verb in another. For example, " he plays the guitar" would be in the ergative case as a transitive agent, whereas "I bought a guitar " and "as the guitar plays" (the latter being the intransitive sense of the same verb "to play") would both be in the absolutive case. Nouns are inflected by one of eight cases and for possession. Verbs are inflected for one of eight moods and for

630-404: The 1700s. Greenlandic's first orthography was developed by Samuel Kleinschmidt in 1851, but within 100 years, it already differed substantially from the spoken language because of a number of sound changes . An extensive orthographic reform was undertaken in 1973 and made the script much easier to learn. This resulted in a boost in Greenlandic literacy , which is now among the highest in

665-483: The Greenlandic National Radio, Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa , which provides television and radio programming in Greenlandic. The newspaper Sermitsiaq has been published since 1958 and merged in 2010 with the other newspaper Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten , which had been established in 1861 to form a single large Greenlandic language publishing house. Before June 2009, Greenlandic shared its status as

700-507: The Greenlandic grammar is similar to other Eskimo languages, on the morpholological and syntactic plan. The morphology of Greenlandic is highly synthetic and exclusively suffixing (except for a single highly-limited and fossilized demonstrative prefix). The language creates very long words by means of adding strings of suffixes to a stem. In principle, there is no limit to the length of a Greenlandic word, but in practice, words with more than six derivational suffixes are not so frequent, and

735-583: The West Greenlandic dialect is spoken in the towns and settlements of the western coast. Danish is also in use in the bigger towns. Tunumiit oraasiat, the East Greenlandic dialect, is spoken on the eastern coast. Qaasuitsup Qaasuitsup ( Greenlandic pronunciation: [qaːsuitt͡sup̚] , Place of Polar Darkness ) was a municipality in Greenland , operational from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2017. As of January 2015, its population

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770-495: The average number of morphemes per word is three to five. The language has between 400 and 500 derivational suffixes and around 318 inflectional suffixes. There are few compound words but many derivations. The grammar uses a mixture of head and dependent marking . Both agent and patient are marked on the predicate, and the possessor is marked on nouns, with dependent noun phrases inflecting for case. The primary morphosyntactic alignment of full noun phrases in Kalaallisut

805-767: The eastern Tunumiisut variety) is the only Eskimo language having lost its dual. Verbs carry a bipersonal inflection for subject and object. Possessive noun phrases inflect for both possessor and case. In this section, the examples are written in Greenlandic standard orthography except that morpheme boundaries are indicated by a hyphen. Greenlandic distinguishes three open word classes : nouns , verbs and particles . Verbs inflect for person and number of subject and object as well as for mood. Nouns inflect for possession and for case. Particles do not inflect. Oqar-poq say- 3SG / IND Oqar-poq say-3SG/IND "(S)he says" Angut man. ABS Angut man.ABS "A man" Naamik No Naamik No "No" The verb

840-428: The ends of words. Before a uvular consonant ( /q/ or /ʁ/ ), /i/ is realized allophonically as [e] , [ɛ] or [ɐ] , and /u/ is realized allophonically as [o] or [ɔ] , and the two vowels are written ⟨e, o⟩ respectively (as in some orthographies used for Quechua and Aymara ). /a/ becomes retracted to [ɑ] in the same environment. /i/ is rounded to [y] before labial consonants. /u/

875-468: The first Greenlandic dictionary in 1750 and the first grammar in 1760. From the Danish colonization in the 1700s to the beginning of Greenlandic home rule in 1979, Greenlandic experienced increasing pressure from the Danish language. In the 1950s, Denmark's linguistic policies were directed at strengthening Danish. Of primary significance was the fact that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish. From 1851 to 1973, Greenlandic

910-441: The locations of the different Inuit languages, among them the two main dialects of Greenlandic and the separate language Inuktun ("Avanersuaq"). The most prominent Greenlandic dialect is Kalaallisut, which is the official language of Greenland. The name Kalaallisut is often used as a cover term for all of Greenlandic. The eastern dialect ( Tunumiit oraasiat ) , spoken in the vicinity of Ammassalik Island and Ittoqqortoormiit ,

945-530: The official language in Greenland with Danish. Since then, Greenlandic has become the sole official language. That has made Greenlandic a unique example of an indigenous language of the Americas that is recognized by law as the only official language of a semi-independent country. Nevertheless, it is still considered to be in a "vulnerable" state by the UNESCO Red Book of Language Endangerment . The country has

980-804: The use of temporal particles such as "yesterday" or "now" or sometimes by the use of derivational suffixes or the combination of affixes with aspectual meanings with the semantic lexical aspect of different verbs. However, some linguists have suggested that Greenlandic always marks future tense . Another question is whether the language has noun incorporation or whether the processes that create complex predicates that include nominal roots are derivational in nature. When adopting new concepts or technologies, Greenlandic usually constructs new words made from Greenlandic roots, but modern Greenlandic has also taken many loans from Danish and English . The language has been written in Latin script since Danish colonization began in

1015-528: The world . Greenlandic was brought to Greenland by the arrival of the Thule people in the 1200s. The languages that were spoken by the earlier Saqqaq and Dorset cultures in Greenland are unknown. The first descriptions of Greenlandic date from the 1600s. With the arrival of Danish missionaries in the early 1700s and the beginning of Danish colonization of Greenland, the compilation of dictionaries and description of grammar began. The missionary Paul Egede wrote

1050-509: Was 17,168. The administrative centre of the municipality was in Ilulissat (formerly called Jakobshavn). The municipality consisted of the former municipalities of western and northern Greenland, each named after the biggest settlement: Effective 1 January 2018, Qaasuitsup Kommunia was partitioned into two new municipalities: The municipality was located in northwestern Greenland. With an area of 660,000 km (254,827.4 sq mi), it

1085-519: Was 17,498. In the south, it is flanked by the Kujalleq municipality, with the border running alongside Alanngorsuaq Fjord . The waters flowing around the western coastline of the municipality are that of Labrador Sea , which to the north narrows down to form Davis Strait separating the island of Greenland from Baffin Island . In the southwest, Ikka Fjord is best known for its eponymous ikaite columns, of

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1120-455: Was entirely contained within the municipality. In the far northwest near Qaanaaq and Siorapaluk , the municipal shores extended into Nares Strait , which separates Greenland from Ellesmere Island . Denmark claimed Hans Island as part of Qaasuitsup (now Avannaata ), while Canada considers it to be part of the Nunavut region of Qikiqtaaluk . Kalaallisut , the West Greenlandic dialect,

1155-520: Was free of traffic. In the east and northeast it was bordered by the Northeast Greenland National Park . At the southern end of the municipal coastline were the waters of Disko Bay , an inlet of the larger Baffin Bay , which to the north edges into the island of Greenland in the form of Melville Bay . The coastline of northeastern Baffin Bay is dotted with islands of the Upernavik Archipelago , which

1190-459: Was the largest municipality in the world by area, larger than France at 643,427 km (248,428.6 sq mi). In the south, it was flanked by the Qeqqata municipality. In the southeast, it was bordered by the Sermersooq municipality, however this border ran north–south ( 45° West meridian ) through the center of the Greenland ice sheet ( Greenlandic : Sermersuaq ), and as such

1225-435: Was written in a complicated orthography devised by the missionary linguist Samuel Kleinschmidt . In 1973, a new orthography was introduced, intended to bring the written language closer to the spoken standard, which had changed considerably since Kleinschmidt's time. The reform was effective, and in the years following it, Greenlandic literacy has received a boost. Another development that has strengthened Greenlandic language

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