Colloquial Greenlandic (Routledge)

[Gamma]

A few days ago I wrote Routledge asking whether we could expect the publication of a Colloquial course (book and audio recordings) for the self-study of Greenlandic in the near future. Here is what they kindly answered:

"On Greenlandic, yes, we will look into this to see if it’s viable. It has been on our radar for quite a while."

Happy news for us! Colloquial Greenlandic would be amazing mainly because of the fact that currently there is not even one self-teaching program written in English for studying Greenlandic available in the market. If you guys are also interested, please send an e-mail to andrea.hartill@tandf.co.uk (senior commissioning editor - language learning - Routledge). If we encourage them, Colloquial Greenlandic could come out! Let's also spread this message to all language forums/communities on the web and language learners we know.

Thanks everybody and have a nice day.

P.S.: I would love to see an Assimil Greenlandic, but I do not think they take in consideration such a publication. I will contact them too, anyway.

[księżycowy]

That would be quite fascinating. I'd buy it if they come out with it.

On a side note, I wish they'd come out with Colloquial Quechua again.

[zeme]

If this ever happens, I won't believe it (I'll be very happy, though)

[księżycowy]

If this ever happens, I won't believe it (I'll be very happy, though)

That's about it. I'd be surprised as shit if they actually came out with it.

But I'm guessing that even if they did come out with it, it'd be like Colloquial Quechua and only come out for a short time (a few months, if even) and then be discontinued.

[Langgard]

Hi

Just to draw your attention to the e.learning system "Greenlandic for Foreigners". Module I was published i July this year and module II will be ready around New Year.

If you are interested you may want to check out learngreenlandic.com and you may want to look into the thread on viewtopic.php?f=105&t=34233

Our homepage might even give you the first idea about why we consider communication strategy based approaches to colloquial Greenlandic as an impossible strategy and a hopeless waste of time

Per Langgard

[Gamma]

Naaah, a good textbook with audio recordings designed for the self-study of Greenlandic will always be something fantastic; it is definitely not a waste of time. Let me go further and tell you that using the computer to learn a language from scratch, or just to study anything, is not as enjoyable and exciting, in my opinion, as it is when you hold a nice book with your hands, which is much more healthy and interesting. Internet is already something that surrounds us everyday, in all types of activities; so when we want to start the process of assimilating a new language, it is extremely pleasant and beneficial to focus on books and recordings and stay away from the computer - which can be added later on anyways, as a complementary tool, to the process of consolidating/practicing the target language - at least in this occasion.

Langgard, a new thread could be easily opened with the goal of discussing and analyzing good online resources for learning Greenlandic. Let's leave this one for books and recordings only.

[Langgard]

Hi Gamma

Can I ask you to re-read my post? I most certainly do not mind books and audio recording and I am not trying to persuade anyone to use computers instead of traditional teaching if available. On the contrary!

What I wrote in my post is a very different issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with the mediae of instruction: The extreme polysynthetic structure in Greenlandic calls for a student to be able to understand and produce more than a million wordforms at a useable rate of speed already at the beginners' level (for instance after one weekly class one winter!). Such masses of surface wordforms simply cannot be achieved if one has to rely on actual communication using real surface words.

Abstract (grammatical) description is absolutely unavoidable.

Langgard