[lg policy] Greenland: Saving world's words

[Harold Schiffman]

Saving world's words







Jason George

Chicago Tribune

August 23, 2009

SISIMIUT, Greenland -- Professor Lenore Grenoble stared at the bowl of
raw beluga meat and gulped.

"So this is mattak?" Grenoble asked, using the Greenlandic word for
the Inuit delicacy.

An elder eyed Grenoble as she moved a gelatinous slice toward her
mouth. The whale meat smelled like fishy butter.

"It's chewy," she said, swallowing her first bite. "It's not what I expected."

Experiencing the unexpected is just part of the job for Grenoble, 51,
a University of Chicago linguist who studies endangered languages.
Rickety airplanes, horrible hotels and unusual cuisine are facts of
life in fieldwork that often occurs far from her Hyde Park office.

"Getting robbed in Russia or [eating] raw reindeer hearts have
probably been the worst part," she said, laughing. "I'd actually
prefer to be a vegetarian, but it's just not possible in the places I
work. It would be too disrespectful."

Grenoble smiles through the hardships because she believes that
language is much more than words -- it's our culture, our history.
It's what connects people to one another, and if it's lost, a society
is truly threatened.

"When the language is in trouble there are all kinds of other things
in trouble, so that's the canary in the coal mine," she said.

Grenoble traveled to Greenland earlier this month because the country
is one of the few places on the planet where the local language is
strengthening despite having a limited number of speakers. Grenoble
hopes that the secrets to the Greenlandic language's success will help
other native tongues, especially those that face extinction.

The United Nations estimates that half of the 6,700 languages spoken
today are in danger of disappearing before the century ends.

"If you're living in a northern environment and you're subsisting on
some part on the environment, everything is changing," said professor
Ross Virginia, director of the Institute of Arctic Studies at
Dartmouth College.

"What's cutting edge about [Grenoble's] work is the recognition of
that and her willingness to get into these northern environments and
try to understand the nature of change."

Grenoble discovered her own love of languages as a teen growing up in
upstate New York. By her high school senior year, she was studying
French, German, Latin and Russian. At Cornell University, Grenoble
found her calling in linguistics, the scientific study of languages.
She also realized she was more interested in exploring remote corners
of the world than studying abstract grammatical theory. Before she
even graduated, she had traveled and studied in the Soviet Union and
the Balkans.

"At one level I'm a linguist's linguist: I get excited about
languages. I get excited about the structures, and I like the sounds,
and I like to learn new languages," she said.

"I'm also very much a linguist who works with the people who use the language."

That's what brought her to Greenland and Sisimiut, which sits 45 miles
north of the Arctic Circle and has a population of 6,000, making it
Greenland's second largest city in Greenland.

Like all other Greenland settlements, Sisimiut can only be reached by
boat, airplane or, in the winter, by dog sled. From New York,
Grenoble's trip here meant three flights -- one on a U.S. Air National
Guard transport and two hops on Air Greenland propeller planes. It was
a considerable effort and expense, and Grenoble did it largely to meet
with one man: Carl Christian Olsen, an Inuit leader -- and former
University of Chicago student -- who is largely credited with bringing
the Greenlandic language back from the brink.

"I think my background has been very determined about what we should
do for our people," said Olsen, 66, who spent decades fighting for
Denmark to return political power to Greenland.

That feat was accomplished in June, when Denmark, which colonized the
island in 1721, peacefully returned most political control to
Greenland. One of the first moves the Greenlanders made was to declare
Greenlandic their sole official language. It was an accomplishment
that Olsen had spent decades fighting for.

"A lot of people took for granted that there was no future for the
Greenlandic language," Olsen said.

Olsen, who grew up in Sisimiut in the 1940s, spoke Greenlandic at
home, even though Danish was the first language taught in schools.

He came to the University of Chicago in 1969 to do graduate work in
linguistics. There, he studied much more than syntax: "I was watching
the civil rights movement in the United States."

Olsen brought that activism back to Greenland and began to fight for
his country and its language. He marched in Copenhagen. He advocated
for home rule, Denmark's 1979 decision to let Greenland manage some of
its own affairs. "Greenlandic identity is not intolerance but
affirming the Greenlandic Inuit background added with the Danish and
English cultural background," Olsen said.

He became a teacher, creating a class called "Arctic History Before
1492" and teaching Inuit poetry in Greenland and Alaska. Today, Olsen
is the director of the Oqaasileriffik or Language Secretariat, a
quasi-governmental organization that promotes Greenlandic within the
country.

Greenlandic is not an easy language. Before Grenoble traveled to
Greenland, she attempted to learn some, but struggled. Even after
several tutoring sessions from U. of C. colleague Jerrold Sadock,
Grenoble made little headway. "I've learned three phrases," said the
frustrated professor before she left.

Olsen would be her guide in Greenland, a country four times the size
of California -- and with only 55,000 residents.

In Sisimiut, the professor and the teacher often discussed language
policy until midnight, when the summer sun still hung in the sky. Ever
the teacher, Olsen also taught Grenoble some Greenlandic grammar using
a Danish-Greenlandic dictionary. (The last Greenlandic-English
dictionary hit stores in 1926.)

Over several lengthy conversations -- punctuated with long stretches
of typical-Greenlandic silences -- Olsen explained to Grenoble that
there's much work left to do here. "I'm happy we've been reaching so
much even though we are just 50,000 people," he said. But "what we are
waiting for is the political backing and then the implementation.

"If you look around at the towns in Greenland, you'll see that Danish
is still very obvious."

Indeed, strolls through Sisimiut reveal that much signage remains in
the colonial tongue. Grenoble noted these examples as she and Olsen
toured the local university and language school, and met with
officials to discuss Greenlandic policy. Often on these walks, the duo
would be interrupted by shouts of "Puju!" from passersby.
(Greenlanders love nicknames and Olsen acquired "Puju," which means
"smoke," during a cigarette-smoking phase in high school.)

"Puju, you're like the unofficial mayor," Grenoble teased one day.

In addition to promoting the Greenlandic language, Olsen and the
Language Secretariat oversee the naming of places and even new baby
names. (Greenlanders frown on naming babies after living persons,
except members of the Danish royal family. The practice stems from a
belief that babies could drain the life force of the person they're
named after.)

Grenoble said that having an organization like the Language
Secretariat proves critical to small languages that hope to survive.
"It's an advocate that'll fight for language rights and help shape the
strategy and policy."

"This is what they need in places like Siberia," said Grenoble, who
often works there.

Grenoble, who has co-written a book about saving endangered languages,
plans to publish a paper about the Greenland success story. She also
hopes to share her insights with scholars studying endangered
languages across the globe. Next month she heads to Siberia for just
such a conference.

One day Grenoble and Olsen hired a boat to ferry them about 90 minutes
up a fjord to Sarfannguit, a fishing village, population 150 or so.
When the twosome arrived, Olsen's friends and cousins greeted them and
explained that most people had hiked away from town -- it was opening
day of the caribou hunting season.

Left behind though were six schoolgirls -- the boys were hunting --
and Grenoble interviewed them about Greenlandic as they sipped juice
poured into old Pringles cans. "What do you hope to be when you grow
up?" Grenoble asked, as Olsen translated.

A nurse, a high school teacher, an Air Greenland flight attendant, the
girls shyly replied in Greenlandic.

"Not one of those jobs are here in this village, which makes you
wonder about the longevity of these places and this lifestyle,"
Grenoble said.

Grenoble also questioned the town's fishermen about climate change.
Rising temperatures, melting ice and erratic weather are increasingly
common here.

"It's more humid now than when I was a boy," a 41-year-old fisherman
said in Greenlandic.

"We all seem to have colds and chest aches more because of it."

Grenoble said climate change, especially in the arctic, is affecting
language, albeit indirectly. Globalization, population relocation and
increasing English dominance are other factors.

"What we're seeing is a nexus of changes where you're getting climate
change and warming that's disturbing native lifestyle," she said.

"And if you disturb native lifestyle, then language gets disrupted."

On the boat ride back to Sisimiut, Olsen helped Grenoble with her
Greenlandic vocabulary. Immaqa -- "maybe" -- is an important word to
master in a country where the slow pace and extreme elements can
disrupt the most well-laid plans.

The afternoon ride back proved uneventful most of the trip, as the
small fishing boat cut through the glassy, black water. Clouds hung
low and the thermometer read 40 degrees.

All of a sudden two humpback whales appeared up ahead, flapping their
tails. The boat driver cut the motor and slowed to a stop.

"This is amazing," Grenoble said, as a seal surfaced off the starboard side.

"What an amazing place. What a very special place."

Travel for this project's reporting was funded in part by a grant from
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=1830
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