Since the new constitution in 1953 hundreds of learners have every year enrolled in Greenlandic L2 classes but only a few dozens ever acquired the ability to communicate meaningfully. meaningful communication here meaning the learners’ ability to perceive normal private and professional language well enough to navigate safely in Greenlandic and the ability to express themselves fast enough and understandable enough for communication to be tolerable for all involved.
The subject of Greenlandic has subsequently had a low percentile success rate. It is incredibly unsatisfactory and a connotation that frequently has been discussed both in Inatsisartut and between people.
It does not necessarily have to be this way, as a path into the language exists, which my own and others children have found, and like all Good Language Learners that I have ever met, also have followed. The road to learning Greenlandic is through grasping the morass of complex and incomprehensible sounds and internalizing them one step at a time. When this first step is taken a new space is created for building more on top. This is the sole strategy of acquisition that we have both theoretic and practical evidence to show it works.
No one has learned Greenlandic by learning the grammar by heart or memorizing the Greenlandic dictionary or even by signing up for a course. These methods enhance the motivation and probably also aid the learning curve, if properly performed, however, without the real language in great amounts one will not acquire adequate use of the language.
Learn Greenlandic with Per Langgård has recently been revised so that the system helps you find the only real teacher you have, namely the language in it self with its long words and confusing numerous suffixes. With the help of new Greenlandic language technology, we are for the first time ever able to provide a comprehensible input in sufficient quantities for one to internalize the primary knowledge. Over time, this will standardize your abilities enough to reach the target of communicating in a meaningful way in the real Greenlandic world.
Greenlandic is a vital language that can be acquired like any other, however the polysynthetic nature of the language requires a certain concentration. There’s a jungle of “good advice” like “just say something” and “learn certain phrases by heart, then the rest will come”. These can effectively halt your learning because Greenlandic is not like English, where such tips may have helped. These strategies will block your further learning of the language. So choose your guru with care and remember that the acquisition of any new language is an individual process that you alone are in charge of.
Best of luck
Per Langgård
1: En dækket henvisning til en af de mest centrale studier i fremmedsprogsindlæring: Naiman, N. et al. The Good Language Learner. Ontario Instiute for Studies in Education. 1978 ↩
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