(Note: Pending review and approval by the UArctic Indigenous Advisory Board.)
Greenland is home to the Greenlandic language, which comprises the eastern variety Tunumiit and the western Kalaallisut, the latter being the more widely spoken on the island and the basis for the standardized language. There is also Inuktun, which is sometimes called North Greenlandic, though several analyses consider it to be a variety of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut that has been heavily influenced by Kalaallisut. Kalaallisut has been the sole official language of Greenland since 2009, until which time the colonial language Danish had the same status. It is spoken by around 55,000 people, roughly 10,000 of whom reside in Denmark.
The Danish language remains an important avenue for accessing higher education opportunities, as well as many career paths by extension. Most education early on has Kalaallisut as the language of instruction, though this eventually is replaced by Danish by upper secondary schooling. There exists an additional linguistic barrier in certain contexts for those who do not speak Kalaallisut as a native language but rather the other two Greenlandic varieties; it is necessary for these individuals to learn the official variety in order to successfully pursue higher education studies at Ilisimatusarfik/the University of Greenland for instance, alongside Danish.
Due to a shortage of teachers proficient in Kalaallisut and few available educational resources in the language, the capacity for providing higher education is largely not quite yet feasible without the use of Danish. It is further important to note that discipline-specific terminology is widely still in need of development.
With that said, there are higher education offerings at least partly conducted in Kalaallisut, and year after year the academic sphere in and about the language grows. In fact, some students write their theses in Kalaallisut at Ilisimatusarfik.
Map of Greenland illustrating the approximate areas where the different Greenlandic varieties are most prevalent. Lisathe Møller, 2021
Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland
The sole university in Greenland, lectures at this UArctic institution can be carried out in Kalaallisut depending on a professor’s ability to use the language. Students are also permitted to write their theses in the language, and some administrative matters are conducted in Kalaallisut as well. The following are two programs where the language is central to the studies:
Ilisimatusarfik Institutional Language Policy (2022)
Inatsisartut Act on Language Policy (2010)
Kristensen-Mclachlan, R. & Nedergård, J. (2024). A New Benchmark for Kalaallisut-Danish Neural Machine Translation. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Indigenous Languages of the Americas (AmericasNLP 2024), pages 50–55, Mexico City, Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics. (PDF)
Lyberth Kristiansen, L. (2024). The Implementation of Indigenous Languages in Higher Education. The Use of Indigenous Languages in Academia: A Comparative Study of Sámi Allaskuvla- Sámi University of Applied Sciences and Ilisimatusarfik [Master's thesis, Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland]. (PDF)
Møller, H. (2016). Culturally safe communication and the power of language in Arctic nursing. Études/Inuit/Studies, 40(1), 85–104. (PDF)
Trondhjem, N. B. (2017). How are emotions expressed in Kalaallisut. In N. Tersis , & P. Boyeldieu (Eds.), Le Langage de l'émotion : variations linguistiques et culturelles (pp. 397-426). Peeters. (PDF)
Oqaasileriffik – The Language Secretariat of Greenland, which works with the parliamentary committees of Oqaasiliortut / The Greenland Language Council and Nunat Aqqinik Aalajangiisartut / The Greenland Place Names Committee.
About Greenland's Languages - LearnGreenlandic
Ilisimatusarfik Thesis Respository
Trap Greenland: Overview and History of Kalaallisut
Circumpolar Inuit Protocols – For Equitable and Ethical Engagement
