West_Greenlandic

West Greenlandic

West Greenlandic

Main dialect of the Greenlandic language

Kalaallisut (lit. 'language of the Kalaallit'), also known as West Greenlandic (Danish: vestgrønlandsk), is the primary language of Greenland and constitutes the Greenlandic language, spoken by the vast majority of the inhabitants of Greenland, as well as by thousands of Greenlandic Inuit in Denmark proper (in total, approximately 50,000 people).[2] It was historically spoken in the southwestern part of Greenland, i.e. the region around Nuuk.

Quick Facts kalaallisut, Native to ...

Tunumiisut and Inuktun are the two other native languages of Greenland, spoken by a small minority of the population. Danish remains an important lingua franca in Greenland and used in many parts of public life, as well as being the main language spoken by Danes in Greenland.

An extinct mixed trade language known as West Greenlandic Pidgin was based on West Greenlandic.[3]

References

  1. [1]
    44,000 in Greenland, and perhaps 20% more in Denmark. Greenlandic at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) Closed access icon
  2. [2]
    Peter Schmitter, Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit: Sprachbeschreibung und Sprachunterricht, Narr, 2007, p. 406.
  3. [3]
    Silvia Kouwenberg, John Victor Singler (ed.), The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, p. 172.
Stub icon

This article related to the Indigenous languages of the Americas is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article West_Greenlandic, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.