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Language code: kl

Technical information about ISO 639 language code kl

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Kalaallisut language, designated by the kl code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

kl

Name

Official

Kalaallisut

Native

Kalaallisut

Family
Inuit
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
West Greenlandic (Kalaallisut proper)East Greenlandic (Tunumiisut)North Greenlandic (Inuktun/Avanersuarmiutut)
Related languages
InuktitutInuinnaqtunIñupiaq
Key facts
Polysynthetic structure lets entire sentences be expressed as single long wordsGrammar follows an ergative–absolutive alignmentModern orthography introduced in 1973 replaced the special letter ĸ with q and simplified spellingThe language has only three basic vowels, each with short and long formsContains many Danish loanwords, especially for modern concepts
Sample phrase

Aluu, qanoq ippit?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Kalaallisut (also known as West Greenlandic) belongs to the Eskimo-Aleut language family, specifically to the Inuit subgroup. It is primarily spoken in Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. The language uses the Latin script. It is estimated that there are more than 55,000 speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Greenland

50K

Denmark

7K

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Kalaallisut speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

kl-GL – Kalaallisut (Greenland)

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