RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Multilingual Nuuk and the Spread of English

Project Title: Multilingual Nuuk and the Spread of English
PI: Lenore Grenoble
Award Type: 2-Year Target Region
Department: Linguistics
Division/School: Arts & Humanities
Start Year: 2025
Description:

This project supports fieldwork in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, to study the use of multilingualism in the city. One third of the country’s population lives in Nuuk, and it is also home to a significant number of immigrants and temporary visitors. Preliminary observations indicate a kind of linguistic melting pot in Nuuk, with the loss of regional dialect differences in Kalaallisut (Greenlandic), coupled with the significant use of Danish together with an increasing use of English. We hypothesize the emergence of a specific Nuuk dialect that combines elements from all three linguistic systems that can be used to index a specific urban, hip identity. English appears to be entering society by two basic pathways: (1) by immigrants, tourists and migrant workers; and (2) by the local Inuit population, who acquire it through Youtube, media, and online gaming. Funding supports systematic research into the development and usage of this Nuuk lect.