No, not yet, but the Greenlandic language will soon disappear from the face of the earth after the USA takes over Greenland. Trump has announced that he will obtain Greenland by reasonable means or by force.
Greenland, don’t let the USA take over your country. Not much good will come from that. The USA are described as being our friends, but it is better to describe the country as the world’s school bullies. Those who steal other people’s lunch money and clothes, threaten other students, destroy their things and beat people up if they don’t obey the bully and his/her henchmen.
If you are a school student and you have a bike, and it is stolen by an unknown guy, then you see him as a criminal, a thief, an assh*le. What if it is your own friend who threatens you to take your bike, isn’t that theft? Yes, it is. You would try to avoid giving him your bike and not accept that your friend takes it from you in the schoolyard. If one of my friends or allies would threaten to take my bike, he would no longer be my friend. That kind of threats and thefts don’t just happen in the schoolyard.
If an allied head of state threatens to take my country, my land, my resources, my canal, my ruins, let’s just say it like it is: he is not a friend.
But many think differently: Trump is our friend, he is an American, and the USA is the world’s largest democracy. But that doesn’t mean that he can just take other people’s bikes, or, in their case, other lands. If Putin or China would do that, it’s called an invasion or an occupation. Not in the case of the Americans.
When Trump was elected, the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen was one of the first to express her joy, the USA is our friend, and therefore Trump is also a friend. Congratulations on the fair election. Yes, he is also a convicted felon, but that wasn’t so important at that time.
The USA have never been friendly toward indigenous people. It is a miracle that there are still some Native Americans left in the United States. In the 1800s, the United States formulated the so-called Manifest Destiny: the white Americans were chosen to take over the land from the Native Americans in North America. A clearly racist and imperialist starting point that cost many people their lives. They were supposed to take over their land and deport the Native Americans, or just kill them. It was the will of their God.
How many persons in the USA speak indigenous languages? The last census showed that there are 372,000 people who spoke native languages at home. That is slightly more than the number of people living in Aarhus and its suburbs. A tiny fraction of the 331 million people living in the USA. The largest language is Navajo, which is spoken by no more than 170,000 people, fewer than those living in Odense. In 1492, it is estimated that there were almost 3.8 million people who spoke indigenous languages north of the Rio Grande. That is a loss of 90%. There are some youngsters who learn indigenous languages in their schools, but no one learns a language well just by a few hours a week in the classroom. You learn it through conversations with family and friends. My estimate is that there are only a handful of native languages that children learn at home. All other languages, 169 of them, have little chance of survival. For the sake of languages, it is not a good idea to let the US take over Greenland.
Trump used the term Manifest Destiny in his inaugural address when he became president. He clearly wants to expand his territory, and incorporate other countries. Panama, Canada, Gaza and Kalaallit Nunaat: don’t let the USA take over, your countries can only get worse. The USA is only No. 1 in the world in three areas (see below), none of them attractive.
There have been indigenous people for 4,500 years in Greenland, and Greenlanders descend from people who immigrated from what is now Canada, about 1,000 years ago, and their descendants are now by far the largest part of the Greenlandic population. For Trump, or at least his son, only the whites count. It reminds me of Manifest Destiny. The Trump family’s racist and anti-native stance also came to light with family visits to Greenland.
God Trump sent his eldest son to visit the earth in Nuuk, and the son indirectly yet clearly expressed that he is racist and indifferent to the native Greenlanders. What did he say about Hans Egede from Denmark/Norway, the missionary who changed the country like no other before him? Trump Jr. said: “This is where it all began”. No, Junior, that was when the first white Christians came to the country. And if the United States is going to colonize your land and resources, there will be more whites, more diseases, more weapons. Then Greenlanders will disappear. Remember that Trump Senior mentioned Manifest Destiny in his inaugural speech, an ideology which is now being spread to the rest of the world. Not many have noticed the expression. No, it does not bode well for Greenlanders and the Greenlandic language.
It is a bit strange that Trump’s threat that he wants the world’s largest island to rule over it and enrich himself with its elements was not compared to the statements and actions of other autocrats and dictators with regard to, for example, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
What has the US done to or for the indigenous languages in its own territory? Out of the hundreds of different languages once spoken in 1491, only a handful are now still being learned by children. All other languages are doomed. The natives who spoke them were murdered, or forcibly assimilated, or they have voluntarily accepted a white American lifestyle. This could also happen in Greenland.
Everyone has to learn English in Greenland, and there are more people who speak English in the world, and Greenlandic is useless as a language. What can the language be used for? Only 56,000 people speak Greenlandic. Everyone in the world speaks English, or so people think. That’s what people think. By the way, that’s not true: only 5% of the world has English as a first language. There are more who speak Mandarin Chinese. Only 17% of the world’s population can speak some form of English. Remember that.
Many see English as a language of liberation. It is not. All countries that have had Britain or the United States as colonial powers have seen their languages disappear: Australia went from several hundred languages to a situation where many languages are extinct and only about 10 are learned by children. It is not much better in the United States.
It is not ideal for Greenland to be part of the Commonwealth of Denmark, but as part of the United States it will be worse. If Greenland becomes American, Greenlandic will be extinct within three generations. I hope that Greenland is able to keep the United States out of their institutions and government. 169 American soldiers on the US airbase is more than enough. The Americans pretend to be liberators, but they are introducing one of the most terrible social systems on earth. Only surpassed by autocratic dictatorships. Unfortunately, the United States is developing more and more in this direction too. For language and society, the worst possible option.
Facts about the United States:
Economy
– In 2022, the United States was No. 2 on the list of OECD countries with the highest number of poor people.
– The United States has one of the largest differences between rich and poor.
– The US has more inequality than countries like Morocco, Suriname and El Salvador, and is ranked among the so-called developing countries by statistics.
– The largest companies pay no taxes.
Health
– Healthcare is the worst and most expensive in the US when compared to nine other developed countries.
– In terms of life expectancy, the US is 49th in the world.
Education
– The US is No. 7 in the world for literacy, No. 27 for math, etc.
– Some states in the USA see books as more dangerous than guns; they ban books but not guns.
– The education system is bad, just not for the rich.
– Schools have to organize bake sales to pay for education in school.
– The USA is No. 136 in listings of literacy, just under Cape Verde, Zimbabwe and Syria.
Security
– There are about four mass murders of innocent citizens every year.
– The US is the most criminal country in the world, with the highest proportion of people in prison in the world.
– About 20% of the world’s prisoners are in American prisons.
– Prisons are commercialized.
– You can avoid prison by becoming the country’s president, who is himself a “convicted felon”, or you can avoid prison by being filthy rich.
– Racism.
– School shootings: there were 1195 of them in 10 years in the US (China is No. 2 in the world with 21).
– Drugs.
Climate
– Poor public transportation.
– High CO2 emissions.
– All programs and treaties related to climate are being scrapped.
Security, global
– The US has military forces in most countries in the world, a total of 160,000 people are stationed.
– Trump was the first US president who did not invade other countries with military force. Not yet.
– In his second term as president, Trump has announced that he will conquer Panama, Greenland and Canada, either economically or with military force.
– Manifest Destiny.
Democracy
– Some parties try to prevent parts of the population from being able to vote.
– There are two parties; it is not a one-party state.
Quality of life
– Most houses are of poor quality.
– Propaganda is so strong that many poor people believe that it is good that they have bad working conditions, a bad health system.
– Insurance is expensive and bad.
– Up to a third of the population must have two jobs to get by, more than any other country.
The USA is No. 1
– The USA is only No. 1 in the world in terms of the number of people in prison, military spending and the number of people who believe that angels exist.
Peter Bakker is an associate professor of linguistics at Aarhus University. He has done linguistic fieldwork in Canada and the USA with speakers of several indigenous languages. He is an adopted Cree. When he visited Greenland in 2008 he was happy to hear so much Greenlandic around him. He has, among other things, written articles about a Frisian loanword in Greenlandic and translated a Dutch sea captain’s travel account about Greenland and Labrador from 1721 into English.
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2019 – International Year of Indigenous Languages