Greenlandic
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Greenlandic is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken by people in Greenland as their primary means of communication. It matters because it represents an important indigenous language of the Arctic region and serves as a key part of Greenlandic cultural and national identity.
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Greenlandic, also known by its endonym Kalaallisut (kalaallisut, [kalaːɬːisʉt]), is an Inuit language belonging to the Eskimoan branch of the Eskaleut language family. It is primarily spoken by the Greenlandic people native to Greenland, with about 57,000 native speakers as of 2025, making it the largest Eskaleut language by number of speakers. Written in the Latin script, it is the sole official language of Greenland, and a recognized minority language in Denmark.
In June 2009, the government of Greenland, the Naalakkersuisut, made Greenlandic the sole official language of the autonomous territory, to strengthen it in the face of competition from the colonial language, Danish. Greenlandic is closely related to Canadian Inuit languages such as Inuktitut. The main variety is Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic. The second variety is Tunumiit oraasiat, or East Greenlandic. The language of the Inughuit (Thule Inuit) of Greenland, Inuktun or Polar Inuit, is a recent arrival and a dialect of Inuktitut.
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Agglutinative languagesGreenlandic languageIndigenous languages of North AmericaIndigenous languages of the AmericasIndigenous languages of the North American ArcticLanguage articles citing Ethnologue 25Language articles with IETF language tagLanguages of DenmarkLanguages of GreenlandLanguages with ISO 639-1 codeLanguages with ISO 639-2 code