Greenlandic spelling reform

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The Greenland spelling reform was carried out in 1973 and replaced Kleinschmidt's orthography with the one that is common today.

History of Greenlandic Spelling

Eskimo-Aleut languages usually had no script and were only passed on orally. The first writing went hand in hand with Christian proselytizing in Greenland . In 1750 , Hans Egede was the first to write a Greenlandic dictionary . His son Poul Egede translated the New Testament into Greenlandic in 1766 . As he was used to from Europe, Egede used the Latin writing system . In 1794 Otto Fabricius wrote a new version of the New Testament. His spelling differed from Egedes. In 1822 Johann Konrad Kleinschmidt published a third version of the biblical text - again with a different spelling. There was an increasing desire for a uniform spelling, which was finally answered by Samuel Kleinschmidt , son of the previous one. He wanted to create a phonemic orthography . In 1851 he introduced a spelling based on five vowels and diacritical marks to mark vowel and consonant lengths. In addition, the alphabet contained a letter with a Kra , which does not appear in the usual Latin alphabet. This Kleinschmidt orthography was retained for over 100 years before the system was simplified in 1973. The Kra, which was replaced by a q, was omitted, as were the diacritics, in order to enable the simplest possible writing with a standard keyboard .

Kleinschmidt orthography

The uniform spelling introduced by Kleinschmidt contained the following letters:

Capitals A. Á Â Ã B. C. D. E. Ê F. G H I. Í Î Ĩ J K L. M. N O O P K ' R. S. T U Ú Û Ũ V W. X Y Z Æ O Å
Minuscule a á â ã b c d e ê f G H i í î ĩ j k l m n O O p ĸ r s t u ú û ũ v w x y z æ O å

A large number of the letters only appeared in mostly Danish loan words. Complicated combinations of consonants also existed, but they were by no means phonemic.

New Greenland spelling

When the script was reformed in 1973, many letters were dropped. The following remained:

Capitals A. B. C. D. E. F. G H I. J K L. M. N O P Q R. S. T U V X Y Z Æ O Å
Minuscule a b c d e f G H i j k l m n O p q r s t u v x y z æ O å

Letters shown in italics still only appear in loan words.

The diacritics have now been replaced as follows:

Diacritic Replaced by
◌́ ( acute ) Duplication of the following consonant
◌̂ ( circumflex ) Doubling the vowel
◌̃ ( tilde ) Double the vowel and the following consonant

Instead of the tilde, a grave accent ◌̀ was sometimes used before.

Other changes were made to the vowels and consonant combinations, which are now made phonemic.

old New annotation
a + vowel aa not in the end
e i only in the end
O u only in the end
gf, vf ff
gdl, tdl, vdl ll
ngm mm
ngn, vn nn
gp pp
rĸ, vĸ qq
gs, gss, vs ss
gt, vt dd
approx rl
ĸ q
ss s

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kenn Harper: Alphabets and Writing, North America and Greenland . In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . tape 1 . Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-436-5 , pp. 58–61 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ a b Michael Everson: The Alphabets of Europe. Greenlandic Kalallisut (PDF; 27 kB). 2001.