Tucked away at the top of the world lies the misleadingly named polar island of Greenland, home to the Greenlandic people. Since the island technically belongs to Denmark, Danish culture and language has had a major impact on the native Greenlanders, but a sense of Greenlandic independence has been steadily gaining steam. Part and parcel of the independence attitude is pride in the Greenlandic language, notorious for its grammatical complexity and long words. Unfortunately, finding Greenlandic translation services can be difficult.
Most translation agencies don’t bother providing services for endangered or minority languages like Greenlandic. Even though Greenlandic is the sole official language of the semi-autonomous island, it’s still classified as a “vulnerable” language, but as the island ramps up its “Greenlandization,” it’s bound to strengthen. At TranslationServices.com, we support the linguistic rights of the indigenous people of Greenland, so we’re proud to offer professional Greenlandic translation services in any of the three Greenlandic dialects.
Reach out today to learn more details about our Greenlandic translation services.
Greenlandic: the language of the far north
Greenlandic is the sole example of an indigenous language in the Americas that is recognized as the only official language of a territory. The language landed on the icy shores of the polar island in the 1200s by way of the Thule people from what is now northern Canada and is now spoken by around 56,000 people in Greenland. While the language is divided among three dialects, Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic, is by far the biggest, with roughly 52,000 speakers. Tunumiusut, or East Greenlandic, is spoken by around 3,000 people, and Inuktun, or North Greenlandic, has only around 1,000 speakers.
Greenlandic is notorious for its grammatical complexity. As a polysynthetic Inuit language, Greenlandic can sometimes express entire sentences through a single word. The language features eight cases and eight verbal moods, as well as verbal inflection for the person and number of both the subject and object of the sentence. Greenlandic also uses ergative alignment, which means that the object of a transitive phrase is marked the same way as the subject of an intransitive clause. With several hundred derivational verbal suffixes, Greenlandic can also express adverbial ideas like “almost” through the verb.
Greenlandic’s complexity makes it a tricky language for non-native speakers to learn and even more so to translate. With our professional Greenlandic translation services, however, getting a translation to or from Greenlandic is simple.
Greenlandic translation from passionate native Greenlandic translators
Our translators come from all across Greenland, whether that’s Nuuk, Sisimiut, or Tasiilaq, or Qaanaaq. This means we can cover all three Greenlandic dialects: Kalaallisut, Tunumiusut, and Inuktun. Our translators are passionate about keeping the Greenlandic language alive and thriving, so they’d be thrilled to help you translate historical documents or culturally significant literature into English to share with the rest of the world, or stories, games, apps, and more into Greenlandic to enrich the lives of Greenlanders.
If you’re ready for high-quality Greenlandic translation services, reach out to our team today!