(), also known as West Greenlandic (), is the primary language of

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

and constitutes the

Greenlandic language Greenlandic, also known by its Endonym and exonym, endonym Kalaallisut (, ), is an Inuit languages, Inuit language belonging to the Eskaleut languages#Internal classification, Eskimoan branch of the Eskaleut languages, Eskaleut language family. ...

, spoken by the vast majority of the inhabitants of Greenland, as well as by thousands of Greenlandic Inuit in Denmark proper (in total, approximately 50,000 people).Peter Schmitter, ''Sprachtheorien der Neuzeit: Sprachbeschreibung und Sprachunterricht'', Narr, 2007, p. 406. It was historically spoken in the southwestern part of Greenland, i.e. the region around

Nuuk Nuuk (; , formerly ) is the capital and most populous city of Greenland, an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. Nuuk is the seat of government and the territory's largest cultural and economic center. It is also the seat of gove ...

. Tunumiisut and Inuktun are the two other native languages of Greenland, spoken by a small minority of the population. Danish remains an important

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

in Greenland and used in many parts of public life, as well as being the main language spoken by Danes in Greenland. An extinct mixed trade language known as West Greenlandic Pidgin was based on West Greenlandic.Silvia Kouwenberg, John Victor Singler (ed.), ''The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies'', Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, p. 172.

References

{{IndigenousAmerican-lang-stub Greenlandic language Inuit languages Languages of Greenland Indigenous languages of the North American Arctic