Greenlandic phonology

Consonants

Greenlandic has consonants at five points of articulation: labial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular. It distinguishes stops, fricatives, and nasals at the labial, alveolar, velar, and uvular points of articulation.

• The labiodental fricative is contrastive only in loanwords.
• Often, Danish loanwords containing ⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example ⟨baaja⟩ "beer" and ⟨Guuti⟩ "God"; these are pronounced exactly as .

Phonotactics

The Kalaallisut syllable is simple, allowing syllables of (C)(V)V(C), where C is a consonant and V is a vowel and VV is a double vowel or word-final . Native words may begin with only a vowel or and may end only in a vowel or or rarely . Consonant clusters occur only over syllable boundaries, and their pronunciation is subject to regressive assimilations that convert them into geminates. All non-nasal consonants in a cluster are voiceless.

Prosody

Greenlandic prosody does not include stress as an autonomous category; instead, prosody is determined by tonal and durational parameters. Intonation is influenced by syllable weight: heavy syllables are pronounced in a way that may be perceived as stress. Heavy syllables include syllables with long vowels and syllables before consonant clusters. The last syllable is stressed in words with fewer than four syllables and without long vowels or consonant clusters. The antepenultimate syllable is stressed in words with more than four syllables that are all light. In words with many heavy syllables, syllables with long vowels are considered heavier than syllables before consonant clusters.

Geminate consonants are pronounced long, almost exactly with the double duration of a single consonant.

Intonation in indicative clauses usually rises on the antepenultimate syllable, falls on the penult and rises on the last syllable. Interrogative intonation rises on the penultimate and falls on the last syllable.

Morphophonology

Greenlandic phonology distinguishes itself phonologically from the other Inuit languages by a series of assimilations.

Greenlandic phonology allows clusters of two consonants, but phonetically, the first consonant in a cluster is assimilated to the second one resulting in a geminate consonant. If the first consonant is or , it nevertheless opens/retracts the preceding vowel, which in case of and is then written ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩. Geminate is pronounced . Geminate is pronounced . Geminate is pronounced . Geminate is pronounced and written ⟨ff, rf⟩.

These assimilations mean that one of the most recognizable Inuktitut words, iglu ("house"), is illu in Greenlandic, where the consonant cluster of Inuktitut is assimilated into a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. And the word Inuktitut itself, when translated into Kalaallisut, becomes Inuttut.

When an affix beginning with a consonant is added to a stem that ends in a consonant, the following rules apply (C¹ refers to the final consonant of the stem, C² to the initial consonant of the affix):

is realised as , e.g. → (more narrowly transcribed ), except as in the next paragraph. In spelling, ⟨C¹C²⟩ becomes ⟨C²C²⟩, except for ⟨rC²⟩ and *⟨qC²⟩ which become ⟨rC²⟩ (this is necessary to indicate the retracted quality of , while the open qualities of and are also indicated by spelling them ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩), except for *⟨rq⟩ and ⟨qq⟩ which become ⟨qq⟩.

If the second consonant is , , or , the following applies:
⟨C¹r⟩ becomes ⟨qq⟩.
becomes . In spelling, *⟨C¹v⟩ becomes ⟨pp⟩, except for *⟨rv⟩ and *⟨qv⟩ which become ⟨rp⟩ (this is necessary to indicate the retracted quality of , while the open qualities of and are also indicated by spelling them ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩).
⟨C¹g⟩ becomes ⟨kk⟩, except for * ⟨rg⟩ and * ⟨qg⟩ which become ⟨r⟩.

The consonant has disappeared between and or . Therefore, affixes beginning with ⟨-va⟩ or ⟨-vi⟩ have forms without when they are suffixed to stems that end in .

The Old Greenlandic diphthong has assimilated to , so when a suffix beginning with comes after a single , the becomes . When a suffix beginning with comes after a double , a is instead inserted before the . To summarise: → , otherwise → .

The vowel of modern Greenlandic is the result of a historic merger of the Proto-Eskimo–Aleut vowels *i and *ɪ. The fourth vowel was still present in Old Greenlandic, as attested by Hans Egede. In modern West Greenlandic, the difference between the two original vowels can be discerned morphophonologically only in certain environments. The vowel that was originally *ɪ has the variant when preceding another vowel and sometimes disappears before certain suffixes.

The degree to which the assimilation of consonant clusters has taken place is an important dialectal feature separating Polar Eskimo, Inuktun, which still allows some ungeminated consonant clusters, from West and East Greenlandic. East Greenlandic (Tunumiit oraasiat) has shifted some geminate consonants, such as to . Thus, for example, the East Greenlandic name of a particular town is Ittoqqortoormiit, which would appear as Illoqqortoormiut in Kalaallisut.