From The Arctic...
With Love
Not being able to speak Greenlandic myself, it can be hard to understand the differences between that and a germanic based language like English. I started asking myself, "is it easier for someone who speaks another germanic language like Danish to learn English, than it is for someone who speaks a language like Greenlandic"?, and "how is Greenlandic or any other Arctic language constructed differently than English"?
I did not want all the technical descriptions that a linguist might give me, but rather the impressions from someone who was trying to learn an Arctic language and had encountered the Arctic culture. Through my work I was able to connect with a geographer who was learning Inuktitut (a language that shares many similarities with Greenlandic), and who has conducted field work in Igloolik, a small village in Northern Canada. |
Igloolik, Northern Canada
|
Jason explains that there are many differences between Inuktitut and English. Both in the grammar and the syntax.