[EDLING:264] Inuit language thrives in Greenland

[Francis M. Hult]

Nunatsiaq News

Inuit language thrives in Greenland

Some in Nunavut fear that Inuktitut, and particularly Inuinaqtun, are dying. 
There are no such fears in Greenland. 

On the streets of Nuuk, Greenlandic is often spoken by children, who all seem 
to carry cellphones. They send text messages to one another, in both 
abbreviated Danish and Greenlandic, shortening words like qujanaq, or thank 
you, to qujan.

Olsen recalls how, in the 1960s and 1970s, elders in Greenland feared their 
language would be lost. They noticed their children spoke words differently. 

But they needn't have feared, Olsen said. Such changes are natural for 
languages. An unchanging language is a dead one.

Today, the vast majority of Greenlanders - 92 per cent - are fluent in their 
native tongue, while 62 per cent are also fluent in Danish, according to the 
Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic, published this March.

Full story:
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