(English below)
6 апреля 2026 года в 18:00 (московское время) состоится заседание семинара по языковым контактам. Выступит Ленора Гренобль (The University of Chicago / Северо-Восточный федеральный университет имени М.К. Аммосова, Якутск) с докладом «Linguistic diversity in Greenland: Nuuk as the hub of contact and change».
Семинар пройдет онлайн. За получением ссылки следует обращаться к Егору Владимировичу Кашкину (egorka1988@gmail.com).
Аннотация доступна ниже в английской версии объявления.
The next meeting of the seminar on language contact will take place on 6 April 2026 at 18:00 (Moscow time). Lenore A. Grenoble (The University of Chicago / M.K. Ammosov North-eastern Federal University, Yakutsk) will give a talk entitled “Linguistic diversity in Greenland: Nuuk as the hub of contact and change”.
The seminar will be held online. If you need the link to participate, please contact Egor Kashkin (egorka1988@gmail.com).
Abstract
Greenland, although home to less than 57,000 people, is a place of high linguistic diversity and language contact. The official language of the country is Kalaallisut, a standardized variety of West Greenlandic, an Inuit language belonging to the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan family. Due to both Greenland’s colonial history and current status as part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Danish is widely known and used by many residents as a second language, and by some as a primary language. It plays an important role in education and government. For a long time, Danish-Kalaallisut bilingualism has been prevalent across much of the population, but that status is in flux now due to immigrant languages and the rise of English.
The present study focuses on the dynamics of language usage in Nuuk, the capital city and home to approximately one third of the country’s entire population. Nuuk is a leader in ongoing change in the rest of the country in a movement away from Danish-Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) bilingualism to the use of English as a lingua franca for the country. There are two key entry points for English: (1) immigrants and short-term visitors (such as tourists and trade partners), who use neither Danish nor Kalaallisut, and (2) from the Greenland population itself, who acquire English independently, often via internet culture (social media, online gaming, music and movies). The spread of English further represents a strongly held belief that outsiders cannot learn Kalaallisut because it is too difficult, and so accommodating them in an “easier” language is an accepted and expected norm. The overall result is a shift in language attitudes and ideologies and increasing moves toward language mixing as a daily practice among youth.
English holds a prominent place in the multilingual repertoires of residents of Nuuk, with one result being frequent code-mixing (in 2 or 3 languages). Selection of languages (Danish or English and Kalaallisut, or Danish-English-Kalaallisut) varies with peer groups, suggesting communities of practice influence linguistic repertoires and code-mixing. Despite the high levels of multilingualism, we find scant evidence of contact-induced change in Kalaallisut other than lexical borrowings from Danish and English. Change in urban Kalaallisut, in particular across younger speakers, is rapidly taking place, but appears to be largely language-internal.
Research was conducted in Nuuk in 2023-2025 using a mixed methods approach, combining an analysis of linguistic landscapes in Nuuk, language snapshots taken during service encounters in Danish, English and Kalaallisut, in-depth sociolinguistic interviews, and conversational data.
Research on this project was conducted in collaboration with Jessica Kantarovich, Camilla Kleemann-Andersen, Ivaana Kleemann-Andersen, and Tikaajaat Gerae Kristensen.