Aphoticom wrote:Thanks for the quick reply, I have just ordered a Danish dictionary in preparation, and another book called From the Writings of the Greenlanders: Kalaallit Atuakkiaannit, which was amazingly inexpensive. I wonder why it is no longer being printed?
I have this book, it's great, but if you are a beginner, it is way too difficult to start with. Do you have a learners' textbook like "Qaagit" or "Kalaallisut sungiusaatit"? Those have audio materials as well.
And yes, I am a beginner, I only know one word, saqqaa, which I learnt from Wikipedia. I have trouble with the Greenlandic 'q' though. I wish it were just pronounced /x/.
You will improve by listening and practicing. I'm no expert on it myself, my Greenlandic chat friends always laugh about me, but it's not impossible to learn it. Try saying /k/ and pronouncing it further back, where you pronounce /x/. It doesn't matter if it doesn't sound quite right at first. You should take care it sounds different from /k/ though, because that makes a difference.
How closely related are Kalaallisut and Inuktitut?
The whole language familiy is a dialect continuum that reaches from Alaska to Greenland. The closer two dialects are geographically, the closer they are linguistically. As far as I have learned, Greenlandic is peculiar in several aspects, so while some of the Canadian dialects are quite closely related and even mutually understandable, Greenlandic stands out a bit.
And most of the North American languages are written in a non-Latin syllable script, while Greenlandic was always written in Latin letters. It got a new spelling in the 1970, which shows words as they are pronounced nowadays, but hides the historical developments of the words, so that's a reason why Greenlandic might also
look weird to other speakers of Inuit languages - just like what Aekari shows in his/her posting.
By the way, have you had a look at the beginners' "lessons" in this forum? You could start practicing a bit with those before you get your books
