The Kalaallisut language (also called Greenlandic, Greenlandic Eskimo, or Greenlandic Inuktitut) is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to Canadian languages like Inuktitut. The language, like its relatives, is highly polysynthetic and ergative. There are almost no compound words, but mostly derivations. Greenland has three main dialects: North, West and East Greenlandic; West Greenlandic, the largest dialect, is called Kalaallisut. The northern dialect, Inuktun, spoken around the city of Qaanaaq (Thule) is more closely related to Canadian Inuktitut. Kalaallisut is spoken by about 50,000 people. Eskimo-Aleut (also called Inuit-Aleut, but both names are considered offensive by some) is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i. ... An ergative-absolutive language (or just ergative language) is one that marks the subject of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs. ... Map of Greenland Qaanaaq (pron. ...

For a short comparison: the name Inuktitut, when translated into Kalaallisut, is Inuttut. One of the most famous Inuktitut words, iglu (house), is illu in Kalaallisut.

Kalaallisut distinguishes two open word classes: nouns and verbs. Each category is subdivided by intransitive and transitive words. The languages distinguishes four persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd reflexive), two numbers (singular, plural; no dual as in Inuktitut), eight moods (indicative, participial, imperative, optative, past subjunctive, future subjunctive, habitual subjunctive), ten cases (absolutive, ergative, equative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative, perlative; for some selected nouns: nominative, accusative). Verbs carry bipersonal inflection for subject and object (distinguished by person and number). Transitive nouns carry possessive inflection. A noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... In grammar, an intransitive verb is an action verb that takes no object. ... In grammar, a verb is transitive if it takes an object. ...

In contrast to Canadian languages, Kalaallisut is not written with the Inuktitut syllabary, but with the Latin alphabet. A special character, the Kra symbol, was used exclusively in Kalaallisut until a spelling reform replaced it with the letter q. A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and most of the languages of western and central Europe, and of those areas settled by Europeans. ... Kra (ĸ) is a character used when writing the Kalaallisut language spoken in Greenland. ... Q is the 17th letter of the Latin alphabet. ...

External links

• The Greenland Language Council (http://www.oqaasileriffik.gl)
• Greenlandic Inuktitut at Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ESG)