Dictionary Struggle

[Aphoticom]

I have been looking for an (relatively) inexpensive English-Icelandic/Icelandic-English dictionary, but I can not find them on English sites and I speak almost no Icelandic so it is difficult for me to find them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[juronjaure]

Just a stupid question, why do you write in the Greenladic forum if you have a question about Icelandic?
To your question; I unfortunately have only online dictionaries to offer:
http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?l=icelandic
http://libtext-dev.library.wisc.edu/Ice ... .TEId.html
http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/icelandic.html
Hope that is enough. If you need more resources, have a look at the link in my signature.

[Aphoticom]

Sorry, I meant Greenlandic.
That was a rather major typing error.

[juronjaure]

Ah okay, that is something else. Try these ones, I don't know if they're good:
http://www.livingdictionary.com/
http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/inuit.html

[nighean-neonach]

Hi,
are you a beginning learner? Then you should choose a learners' book like "Qaagit" which has a word list in the back. Well, just that it's Danish <-> Greenlandic, not English...
There's also a very useful Danish <-> Greenlandic online dictionary, I've linked it somewhere here, and there's the Qimawin CD-ROM which includes several dictionaries, that's also in Danish.

Actually I have no idea if there is an English <-> Greenlandic dictionary available at all. I work with Danish resources, and it's alright - I don't speak Danish, just a little Norwegian, and I use a Danish <-> German dictionary in case I have trouble understanding something.

There is a phrase book called "Greenlandic for travellers" or something, which is in English, it's written by Brigitte Hertling. I don't know if it is good, though.
If you can read German, there's a small phrase book and language guide called "Grönländisch Wort für Wort" which is really good, and it also has word lists in the back.

[nighean-neonach]

Additional comment:

The one from freelang linked by juronjaure is not recommended, it is not Greenlandic, at least not in the modern orthography. Might be some other Inuit language.

The other one, livingdictionary, is from Nunavut in Canada, that's Inuktitut, a certain Inuit dialect, but not Greenlandic.

In general, be careful with "Inuit" resources. Inuit is a language family, and specifically Greenlandic stuff is usually not called "Inuit".

[Aphoticom]

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?

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/. How closely related are Kalaallisut and Inuktitut?

[Aekari]

Related in that they're both from the Eskimo-Aleut family of languages, but I don't believe that Inuktitut and Kalaallisut are mutually intelligible. I would guess that many grammatical features occur in both languages with many morphemes spanning both.

While I'm not an expert with things relating to Kalaallisut, having only recently started, and not knowing much about Inuktitut, it's likely the reason they're not mutually intelligible is the frequency of assimilation in Kalaallisut. "Inuktitut" ("like a person (Inuk)") is heavily assimilated into "Inuttut," and "iglu" ("house") becomes "illu." Look at a romanized text of Inuktitut and compare it to a text of Kalaallisut - to me it Inuktitut just looks more clunky with a bunch of "q"s and "k"s that are just assimilated in Kalaallisut.

---
Inuktitut: Nunavut, kanatami pingajugijaujuq anginipaanguqataulluni aviktursimanikku, saqkijaammarisivuq. Pinasuartangallaringali silattuqsarviup ilingnit isumaliurigasuktillutik ikajurniarmata parnakpalliatittinikkut iqkanaijaaksanut ammalu nangminiq aulataujuni ilaulirunnarkullutit tamakkua saqkippallialirtillugi Nunavut pigialaurtillugu.

Kalaallisut: Inuit tamarmik inunngorput nammineersinnaassuseqarlutik assigiimmillu ataqqinassuseqarlutillu pisinnaatitaaffeqarlutik. Solaqassusermik tarnillu nalunngissusianik pilersugaapput, imminnullu iliorfigeqatigiittariaqaraluarput qatanngutigiittut peqatigiinnerup anersaavani.

While they're not the same text, you should be able to see what I'm talking about.

---

As for dictionaries, I don't know about English <-> Greenlandic dictionaries or even Danish <-> Greenlandic dictionary. The one I have is OQAATSIT: Kalaallisuumiit Qallunaatuumut. It's a Greenlandic to Danish dictionary which can be obtained at www.atuagkat.com . It's really expensive though - something like 148 DKK and the shipping outside of Europe is insane.

[nighean-neonach]

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