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West Greenlandic

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West Greenlandic
Kalaallisut, Kitaamiisut
Native toWest Greenland
Denmark
EthnicityKalaallit

Native speakers

(44,000–52,000 cited 1995)[1]

Early forms

Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologkala1399

Inuit dialects. West Greenlandic in blue.

West Greenlandic is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Kalaallisut (lit. 'language of the Kalaallit'), also known as West Greenlandic (Danish: vestgrønlandsk), is the primary and official language of Greenland. It is spoken by the 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, as opposed to the related Greenlandic languages in the northwestern and eastern parts of the island.[3]: 1–2  It has been an official language of Greenland since the 18th century,[4] and the sole official language since 2009.[5]

Kalaallisut is a member of the Inuit–Yupik–Unangan (Eskaleut) language family, which stretches across the Arctic from Siberia to Greenland. It is a member of the Inuit branch of the language family. Kalaallisut is one of three Inuit languages within Greenland, alongside Tunumiisut (East Greenlandic) and Inuktun (North Greenlandic or Polar Inuit). West Greenlandic has the most speakers of the three. The standard form of Greenlandic is based on Kalaallisut as spoken in the central west coast of Greenland. This region includes the capital Nuuk, Sisimiut, and Maniitsoq, some of the most populated cities of Greenland.[3]: 1–2 [4]: 135–136 

Dialects of Kalaallisut

[edit]

There are four main dialects of Kalaallisut, spoken in different regions of the west coast. From south to north, they are: Southern, Central, Northern, and Upernavik. Southern Kalaallisut is spoken from Nanortalik to Paamiut. Central Kalaallisut is spoken from Nuuk to Sisimiut. Northern Kalaallisiut is spoken from the Disko Bay communities north to Uummannaq. Upernavik, the northernmost dialect of West Greenlandic, is spoke in the town of Upernavik. North of Upernavik, Tunumiisut is spoken, which not considered part of the West Greenlandic dialect continuum.[4]: 135–136 

Relationship with Danish

[edit]

Danish remains an important lingua franca in Greenland and is used in many parts of public life, as well as being the main language spoken by Danes in Greenland. This leads to some language contact and code-switching effects with Kalaallisut. Kalaallisut speakers often switch to Danish for loanwords and neologisms, as Kalaallisut's complex morphology makes such words unwieldy. Otherwise, Kalaallisut has mostly stayed unaffected by Danish.[6] Kalaallisut has also had some contact influence on Danish; in Nuuk, there is an emerging dialect of Danish with Kalaallisut-style prosody.[7]: 159 

Permanent residents of Greenland are required by law to attempt to learn Greenlandic.[7]: 159  Danish is taught as a second language beginning in first grade.[8]

An extinct mixed trade language known as West Greenlandic Pidgin was based on West Greenlandic.[9]

West Greenlandic uses around 14 consonants, depending on the subdialect:[10]: 311, 317 [11]: 4 

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular
plain lateral
Nasals m n ŋ (ɴ)[a]
Plosives p t k q
Fricatives v s (ʃ)[b] ɣ ʁ
Approximants l j
  1. ^ The uvular nasal [ɴ] only occurs in some dialects, as a nasalized form of word-final q.[10]: 317 
  2. ^ /ʃ/ has generally merged with [s], but some central West Greenlandic speakers maintain the distinction.[10]: 317 

Geminate (long) consonants are contrastive with short consonants in West Greenlandic.[4]: 137 [10]: 311 

Ranges of West Greenlandic monophthongs on a vowel chart[10]: 317 
Front Back
Close /i/ ⟨i, e⟩ /u/ ⟨u, o⟩
Open /a/ ⟨a⟩

Like other Inuit languages, Kalaallisut only has three vowel phonemes: /i/, /u/, and /a/, with long and short versions. This same vowel system is shared with the other Greenlandic languages, Tunumiisut and Inuktun.[4]: 136–137  The vowels are subject to substantial allophony based on the context of the vowel. For instance, /u/ lowers to [o] before uvular sounds, and fronts to [ʉ] between coronal sounds.[11]

Kalaallisut has a single diphthong, [ai], which is only pronounced as a diphthong at the end of a word, and is pronounced as a long [a:] everywhere else. Sequences of up to four vowels are allowed in Kalaallisut (and Tunumiisut), as in the word ikiuiumatuuq ('helpful').[4]: 142 

Kalaallisut is a polysynthetic language, with words composed of many morphemes, predominantly suffixes. There are more than 400 affixes in active use, with more that are no longer productive.[10]: 309  Due to its polysynthetic nature and extensive affixes, whole sentences can be rendered as a single word; Statistics Greenland gives an extreme example of a 153-letter word, which translates into a 49-word English sentence.[a]

Kalaallisut marks eight cases on nouns: absolutive, relative, instrumental, allative, locative, ablative, prosecutive, and equative. It marks eight verbal inflections as well.[10]: 318–320 

There is some evidence that the morphosyntactic structure of Kalaallisut has been changing from an ergative–absolutive alignment to a nominative–accusative alignment in recent decades.[12]

A few examples of words demonstrate some phonological differences between the Greenlandic languages. These include consonant/vowel cluster assimilation, the phonemic realizations of /l/, /s/, and /v/, palatalization of /t/, and other phonemic differences, which are bolded in the table below:[4]: 137–139 

Kalaallisut
(West)		 Tunumiisut
(East)		 Inuktun
(North)		 English
ippassaq ippatsaq ikpaghaq yesterday
iluartuq ilivartiq iluaqtaq correct
naaja naaja nauja seagull
qarsuq qartiq qarhuq arrow
isi ili ihi eye
Kalaallisut Kalaattisit Kalaallihut Greenlandic
  1. ^ Nalunaarasuartaateeranngualioqatigiiffissualioriataallaqqis­supilorujussuanngortartuinnakasinngortinniamisaalinnguatsi­araluallaqqooqigaminngamiaasiinngooq, which translates as "there were reports that they apparently – God knows for how many times – once again had considered whatever I, my poor condition despite, still could be considered to be quite adept and resourceful as initiator to put a consortium together for the establishment of a range of small radio stations."[8]: 18 
  1. ^ 44,000 in Greenland, and perhaps 20% more in Denmark. Greenlandic at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Peter Schmitter, Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit: Sprachbeschreibung und Sprachunterricht, Narr, 2007, p. 406.
  3. ^ a b Grenoble, Lenore A.; McMahan, Hilary; Petrussen, Alliaq Kleist (January 2019). "An Ontology of Landscape and Seascape in Greenland: The Linguistic Encoding of Land in Kalaallisut". International Journal of American Linguistics. 85 (1): 1–43. doi:10.1086/700317. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Dorais, Louis-Jacques (2003). Inuit uqausiqatigiit [Inuit languages and dialects]. Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College. ISBN 978-1-895050-01-1. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  5. ^ "Greenland". Statsministeriet [The Prime Minister's Office]. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  6. ^ Langgård, Karen (2012). "Considerations about the impact of Danish on the morphology of Kalaallisut". More morphologies: contributions to the Festival of Languages, Bremen, 17 Sep to 7 Oct, 2009. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer. ISBN 978-3-8196-0896-4. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  7. ^ a b Fortescue, Michael (2023). "Greenlandic Dialect Classification". Dialectologia. 10 (Special Issue): 155–168. doi:10.1344/DIALECTOLOGIA2022.2022.6. ISSN 2013-2247. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  8. ^ a b Kleemann, Naduk, ed. (2025). Greenland in Figures 2025 (PDF). Statistics Greenland / Grønlands Statistik. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  9. ^ Silvia Kouwenberg, John Victor Singler (ed.), The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, p. 172.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g Fortescue, Michael (1990). "Basic Structures and Processes in West Greenlandic" (PDF). In Collins, Dirmid R. F. (ed.). Arctic Languages: An Awakening. Paris: UNESCO. ISBN 978-92-3-102661-4.
  11. ^ a b Hagerup, Asger (2011). A Phonological Analysis of Vowel Allophony in West Greenlandic (MA thesis). Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Retrieved 22 January 2026.
  12. ^ Langgård, Karen (2009). "Grammatical structures in Greenlandic as found in texts written by young Greenlanders at the turn of the millennium". Variations on Polysynthesis: The Eskaleut languages. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 231–247. ISBN 978-90-272-8937-7. Retrieved 22 January 2026.