Per Langgård is a Senior Advisor at the Language Secretariat in Greenland. In 1992 he wrote an article based on a project among school children in Nuuk. Langgård explains that the linguistic picture is extremely mixed, i.e. people have very different linguistic and bilingual skills (1992:107), and the languages have had very shifting statuses. The status of Greenlandic has increased since the 1960s, according to Langgård (1992:108). In the 1960s and beginning of 1970s Danish had a very high status, but in the 1970s and beginning of 1980s Danish had a very low status. However, according to Langgård, by the end of 1980s the Danish language once again had a high status (1992:119). Langgård is of the opinion that as long as Greenland is part of Denmark, people in Greenland will need three languages (Greenlandic, Danish and English) in order to face future challenges (1992:127).
11 Meaning ’The Good School’
In 2001 he wrote a paper that sought to account for the language domains. Langgård writes that the language situation in Greenland consists of: a) a strong national language, b) a diglossic situation and c) a political will to ‘bring home’ as many language domains to Greenland as possible. State schooling is a social domain that has been ‘brought home’ to Greenland. ‘The Good School’ legislation pursues, Langgård claims, an assimilationist approach of those pupils who do not yet speak Greenlandic via a transient bilingual school (Langgaård 2001:33). Further education and research continue to take place in Denmark or by Danes, claims Langgård, for example, the majority of the researchers at the University of Greenland are Danes, Langgård points out (2001:39). The publicly elected Parliament is dominated by Kalaallit while the central administration is run by Danes, i.e. public officers are usually higher educated Danes (2001:41).
Jørgen Gimbel and Anne Holmen (1999) have carried out an empirical research project in state schools in Nuuk covering the first three years of the integrated stream program from 1994 to 1997. They found several interesting findings, which will be explained in chapter five.
Karen Langgård (2001) is a professor at Ilisimatusarfik - the University of Greenland in Nuuk, where she teaches Greenlandic grammar and literature. In 2001 she wrote a paper concerning the language use and language attitudes among students at the gymnasium in Nuuk based on 27 interviews carried out in 1998. Students with mixed mother tongues are in the same class except when the subject is Greenlandic, then there are three levels: A-level for mother tongue students, B-level for Greenlandic taught as a second language and C-level for Greenlandic taught as a foreign language (2001:240-242). Apart from this, Langgård writes that the conditions for using Greenlandic in the gymnasium are quite poor, since almost all the staff is Danish people (2001:240).
Students whose mother tongue is Greenlandic seem to switch to Danish when a monolingual Danish speaker enters the conversation and if the subject is of interest to that person (2001:247). Usually the Danish-speaking students who try to speak Greenlandic are laughed at, whereas this does not happen when it is the opposite situation (2001:249-250). Generally students have a pragmatic attitude to the usage of Danish, even though many Greenlandic-speaking students have a hard time attending
classes taught entirely in Danish together with mother tongue speakers of Danish (2001:253).
Henrik Skydsberg (2001) has published a report that studies the factors that are decisive in young people beginning and completing an education based on 1,716 questionnaires from people born in 1970, 1975 and 1980. The study was financed by the Ministry of Culture, Education, Church and Research in Greenland. The report concludes that the people who typically finish an education are mostly women who grew up in towns. The parent’s educational background play an important role, implying that the higher education the parents have, the more likely it is that that their children will have an education (2001:4). The lack of Danish language plays a crucial role for many young people who choose not to have a further education (2001:5). The main reasons why teenagers never even start a further education is that they would rather earn money, they were tired of school, or because they did not know Danish well enough and had poor grades in school (2001:45-46). Young people from villages have indicated that language problems have been a major factor influencing their decision to quit the education system (2001:39-40). The Danish-speaking respondents to the survey were the most educated, followed by the bilinguals and lastly the almost bilingual Greenlandic-speaking people (2001:16-17). The report also concludes that people born in 1980 are more monolingual in Greenlandic or Danish than people born in 1975 or 1970 (2001:5).
Naja Lund and Naaja Nathanielsen (2001) have carried out quantitative questionnaires concerning 390 Kalaallit students completing continuing education in Greenland and Denmark. The survey shows that most students (73%) do not speak Greenlandic at a mother tongue level and 68% of them are not satisfied with their knowledge in Greenlandic language (2001:11-15). Danish-speaking Kalaallit have general problems because they do not speak Greenlandic and 55% of them have been discriminated because they do not speak Greenlandic. 61% of the Danish-speaking Kalaallit believe they will have problems in society in Greenland and 72% feel that it is only the politicians who say Greenlandic is useful (2001:19-20).
The conclusions in Lund and Nathanielsen’s report are backed up by Laila Chemnitz’
(2001) thesis, which is based on eleven qualitative interviews with Greenlandic students
in Denmark. One of the results is that the Greenlandic students who speak better Danish than Greenlandic find it problematic to not be able to speak Greenlandic at a mother tongue level.
Kistâra Vahl Motzfeldt (2002) has written a thesis about language use in Qaqortoq, South Greenland. A total of 143 questionnaires were answered by people in Qaqortoq randomly chosen from the National Register of Persons. A distinction was made between the young generations born in 1981 and in 1982, which totaled 61% of the responses, and the ‘older generation’ born in 1959, which totaled 39% of the responses.
Additionally 16 qualitative interviews were carried out. Motzfeldt’s main conclusion is that Greenlandic has a fairly well-established position in Qaqortoq society since the majority of the population in Qaqortoq speaks Greenlandic. Still there is a minority of Danish-speaking people in Qaqortoq and even though the majority speaks Greenlandic, it cannot avoid being in contact with the Danish language in its everyday life. Another interesting finding is that the tendencies are that more and more young Greenlanders become monolingual in Greenlandic (2002:26+66), which two qualitative interviews confirm (2002:84). Furthermore, it seems that there is a link between higher education and language, i.e. the higher education one has, the more bilingual friends one has (2002:89).
Motzfeldt discusses the terms ‘second language’ and ‘foreign language’ as to language acquisition and she claims that children of mixed marriages (Greenlandic-Danish) could have become bilinguals had it not been for a lack of motivation in learning Greenlandic.
The pupils who received Greenlandic taught as a ‘foreign language’ therefore stayed monolinguals in Danish. Motzfeldt criticizes the random use of the terms second language and foreign language in the Greenland context. If the goal is to produce more bilingual children in the state schools, then Motzfeldt finds it crucial that the authorities in question engage more consciously with the use of these terms, both in connection to the subject Greenlandic and Danish (2002:24-27).
It has not been possible for me to get access to Lisbeth Vahlgren’s (2004) thesis about language policies in the period 1979 to 2003 with its focus on the monolingual Greenlander. But in the abstract she argues that the language debate has to do with
speaking and Danish-speaking Greenlanders, the latter feeling as much Greenlanders as the former. She argues that Greenlanders have begun developing their own identity, which is different from a Danish one, during the end of the 20th Century.
Ulrik Pram Gad (2005) has written a discourse analysis concerning the monolingual Danish-speaking Greenlander’s position in the Greenlandic society. He concludes that this group of people has an uncertain place in society; they are excluded and can only be included in the future on condition that they learn Greenlandic. Some believe that they are Greenlanders with a mistake and that mistake can only be corrected if they learn Greenlandic. Yet another widespread idea among some people, Pram Gad claims, is that monolingual Danish-speaking Greenlander’s are not accepted as Greenlanders and that Greenland does not accept being a bilingual society, because Danish language and culture is a threat to Greenlandic language and culture (2005:211-212).