Taissumani, Feb. 5
Poul Egede and the First Greenlandic Translations
Poul Egede, the creator of the first Greenlandic grammar.
KENN HARPER
With a major language conference coming up shortly in Iqaluit, I thought it might be informative to write a few words about some of the very early pioneers of Inuktitut language study, the men — for they were almost all men — who compiled some of the earliest descriptions of the Inuit language.
Most of them were missionaries, and the earliest of them worked in Greenland.
Hans Egede was a Norwegian who had become fascinated with learning what happened to the ancient Norse colony in Greenland, not heard from in about 300 years.
In 1721, with his wife and three children, Hans Egede set sail for Greenland, hoping to find the remains of the colony and re-introduce Christianity to them.
He found Inuit instead, who had had contact with whalers, mostly Dutch, in the waters off the west coast of the island, and who had some earlier memories of interactions with the old Norse. But the Norse themselves had disappeared.
Undaunted, Egede set about to Christianize the Inuit of Greenland.
Hans Egede laboured in Greenland for 15 years. He attempted to learn the language of the Greenlanders, but in this he experienced great difficulty.
Still, in his best-known book on Greenland, which in translation would be titled “New Description of Old Greenland,” he gave the first description and systematic outline of the language as spoken in West Greenland. This was, in fact, the first description of any branch of the Eskimo language.
Hans Egede’s son, Poul, was 20 years old when he arrived in Greenland with his family. This was a much better age to begin learning a new language, and he made more rapid progress than his father. He fitted in well with the Greenlanders and eventually became missionary in Disko Bay at Christianshaab.
Poul Egede — Pavia to the Greenlanders — began translating the Bible in January of 1737. Eventually he translated the first three books of Moses. He found that Greenlandic lacked terms for many of the words and concepts he needed to translate, and so he began the practice of using Danish words, which eventually became standardized as part of the language.
“Thus began,” in the words of the great historian of Greenland, Finn Gad, “the process of evolution in the West Greenlandic language which, starting with the ‘church language’ gradually came to include the lay language as well.”
Egede’s job was to bring the Bible to the Greenlanders. He was as meticulous in his translations as it was possible to be, but he continually revised what had already been translated, always in search of the correct word.
Egede employed a Greenlandic woman, Arnarsaaq, to help him in his translations, and his practice of constant revision upset her. She thought the word of God should be unchangeable, and asked Egede why it was permissible to change His words so often. “I do not doubt,” she said, “that the Word is true, but those who are not well versed in it might think it is not the truth, since it varies so much…”
Poul Egede returned to Europe in 1740, but continued his involvement with the Greenland mission until his death in 1789. He translated parts of both the old and new testaments into Greenlandic. But he is best known (at least outside Greenland) for his dictionary, published in 1750, and his grammar, published 10 years later.
A later missionary, Otto Fabricius wrote this in the preface to his own later Greenlandic grammar:
“It is now thirty-one years since the first Grammatica Gronlandica saw the light, compiled by the late Bishop Povel [Poul] Egede, my old teacher whom I always loved and honoured as my father and whose memory will ever be sacred to me. All who have considered his work with discernment, as the first of its kind, must with me call it a masterpiece; for writing a grammar of so difficult and unknown a language, in which there were no national writings for guidance and which bears practically no likeness to any of those previously known, was by no means an easy matter. In it everything had to be taken up from the beginning, the rules thought out, established and arranged for the first time – and all this by a man who himself had not learnt the language according to rules but solely by practising in daily intercourse with the Greenlanders. And who may not then admire that the work succeeded so well?”
Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
