Language Study

I have ordered a new DVD to help with our Greenlandic study.  It is called "Greenlandic for Foreigners" and I am eagerly awaiting it's arrival!  You can see their site here.  I tried to order it about a month ago from our local book store to no avail.  It was almost humorous when they told me that I would get it quicker it I ordered it myself rather than waiting on them to order it.

One thing that I really like is that this uses English to teach Greenlandic.  Most of the resources that I have come across use Danish.  Since I am still in the beginning stages of learning Danish, this makes it most difficult to understand what is being taught.

Greenlandic is different than English in that it is a poly-synthetic language.  They take a main word, then add affixes and suffixes to form other words or even sentences.  They have about 420 affixes, so no worries about running out of things to say.

The grammar appears almost backwards from English.  Some of the Greenlaners here tried to explain how the language works and said that instead of just making statements, their language is like looking at a picture or paints a picture.

One example that I showed churches of Greenlandic was an example given in the back of the book "Greenlandic for Travellers."

Atuarfimmukarniaraluapunga means "I had otherwise planned to go to the school."

The word is broken down as such:
 atuar-       school
 -fim         (from 'fik') building (literally 'the place where')
 -mukar-   go to
 -niar-       plan to
 -aluar-     otherwise
 -punga     (present/past tense) I (had)

You might be wondering, did I break this sentence down on my own.  Not at all, I just copied it from the back of the book!  My Greenlandic has a long way to go to understand words like this.  I can recognize a few root words in Greenlandic writings, but only a very few.

Please continue to pray for me, Masey, and our kids as we are working towards fluency with Greenlandic & Danish.

If you would like to read more, you can check out these link:

Greenland Guide - Gives a brief overview of the language and a few example words.

Greenland Guide Audio Phrase Book - You can listen to some Greenlanic here.

Wikipedia article - This gives more technical aspect of the language.

Thank you so much to those who gave extra to help us with the needs that we had. We were able to get our fuel tank filled up, the kids homeschool books ordered, and a washer! The Lord blessed us and we were even able to get several smaller needs too!

It is humbling when the Lord touches the hearts of churches and even individuals to help us here in Greenland. Thank you so much to everyone who has faithfully supported us, prayed for us, and given extra for the needs that we have here! We have been blessed!

 

I am still progressing with the language.  We recently had a woman over for supper that Elijah and I met a few weeks ago. She spoke some English and we had a good meal and

a good time. She taught us some new Greenlandic words and helped us with the pronunciation of others we were having trouble with. We have been using the new words when we can to see if folks can understand us and so far so good!

I also met a Danish man the other day and we got to talking about languages.  He said that he would take me out dog sledding and help me some with my Danish soon! I am looking forward to both, especially since I haven’t gotten to go sledding yet.

We have gotten a good amount of snow the past few weeks and have enjoyed temperatures in the teens and 20’s. The kids have LOVED getting out in the snow and making snowballs, snow men, snow angels, and such things.

The kids have made several friends since we have been here. Most of their friends don’t speak English but they still have a great time playing together. When we see the kids in the stores they will wave really big and say hello to us and our kids. We look forward to when we can speak Greenlandic with these kids and have a Greenlandic Sunday school for them.

We have had Sunday services in our living room ever since we first got here six months ago. We are still a ways off from establishing a church here, but we are beginning to look for places where we could meet at. Please pray for us about this. I don’t believe we would

start renting something until at least after the first of the year, but we are pricing different places where we could rent for Sunday services.

 

 

Elijah celebrated his 7th birthday just a couple weeks ago. He has grown to be such a big young man. He is a good helper and loves to read. We had a great time. He wanted his special "Birthday Meal" to be reindeer soup with curly fries!

 

 

 

Reindeer soup & curly fries