Greenlandic Language - History

History

The Greenlandic language was brought to Greenland with the arrival of the Thule culture in the 1200s. It is unknown which languages were spoken by the earlier Saqqaq and Dorset cultures in Greenland. The first descriptions of Greenlandic date from the 1600s, and with the arrival of Danish missionaries in the early 1700s, and the beginning of Danish colonialism in Greenland, the compilation of dictionaries and description of grammar began. The missionary Paul Egede wrote 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 replacing Greenlandic with Danish. Of primary significance was that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish.

From 1851 to 1973, Greenlandic 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 received a boost.

Another development that strengthened the Greenlandic language has been the policy of "greenlandization" of Greenlandic society which began with the homerule agreement of 1979. This 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 has meant that today monolingual Danish-speaking parents in Greenland are raising children bilingual in Danish and Greenlandic.

Before June 2009, Greenlandic shared its status as the official language in Greenland with Danish. Since then, Greenlandic has become the sole official language. This has made Greenlandic a unique example of an indigenous language of the Americas that serves exclusively as an official language of a semi-independent country, yet it is still considered to be in a "vulnerable" state by the UNESCO Red Book of Language Endangerment. The country has 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.