Kalaallisut

Greenlandic is the English name for the Inuit (Eastern Eskimo) dialects of Greenland (the Inuit term is Kalaallisut). Of the seventy-nine Inuit communities in Greenland, all but seventeen are on the west coast, including the largest, Nuuk. (Golla 2007). There is a significant dialect difference between the west coast settlements and those on the east coast, leading to a distinction between West Greenlandic and East Greenlandic. The five Thule communities in the far northwest of the island constitute a third dialect cluster, sometimes called Polar Eskimo. This dialect is closer to the speech of Baffin Island than to West or East Greenlandic, and is usually considered to be a variety of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut that has been influenced by standard Greenlandic. (Golla 2007)