Tikilluaritsi!
tikil-luar-itsi
arrive-well-2PL . IMP
‘Welcome!’
This fall the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley offers students a unique opportinuty to learn about Kalaallisut, the official language of Greenland. The course is co-taught by Kalaallisut speakers Ellen Thrane and Grethe Schmidt and linguist Line Mikkelsen. The students in the class are learning conversational Kalaallisut from Ellen and Grethe who participate from their homes in Denmark via Zoom. Conversation topics so far include introducing oneself and saying where one lives and where one was born. The sounds of Kalaallisut are quite different from the sounds of English and the students are really putting in effort to be able to say and hear these unfamiliar sounds. In addition, the course teaches students about the linguistic stucture, history and dialects of the language as well as the roles the language plays in Greenlandic society. The course includes quest lectures by Kalaallisut linguists Naja Blytmann Trondhjem (dialacts) and Camilla Kleeman-Andersen (language attitudes).
