Two nights a week, I took the bus an hour across Copenhagen to the school where Danish classes were held. I arrived late at the first lesson, walked into the classroom, and sat down. A middle-aged man with dark curly hair was speaking in Danish to the dozen or so attentive students of various nationalities. I stood up again. Everyone looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was looking for the beginner class.”
“This is it,” the teacher replied and reverted to Danish.
Oh my God! I thought, sinking back into the chair, where I remained for the next hour, understanding nothing.
When I lived in Denmark, working for a Danish Government organization, I was required to learn Danish. It cost me nothing, but I had to take the lessons in my own time. I thought that was reasonable. I had moved to a new country, was working for the Danish government, and Danish is the national language. So a couple of weeks ago, when there was uproar in the media over the Greenlandic Premier’s comments that all government employees should be required to learn Greenlandic, I was a little surprised. Yes, language is a very emotive topic in Greenland, closely tied to ideas of culture and identity. But this was exactly the same situation as I had been in years ago in Denmark when it was taken for granted that all government employees should learn Danish. Why not here? Greenlandic is the national language of Greenland after all. In fact, on moving to Greenland six years ago, I was surprised to find that I wasn’t required to learn Greenlandic. The limited efforts I have made to learn any Greenlandic, or encourage my staff to do so, have been entirely on my own instigation. I have never been asked to make any effort to learn it.
There are aspects of the backlash following the Premier’s comments that I can understand. For one, when you make such comments together with the suggestion that employees could be fired if they don’t pass their Greenlandic language course, and in close proximity with comments about limiting voting rights for Danes resident in Greenland to those who have lived in the country more than two years – then it starts to take on the slightly bitter taste of nationalism. One would hope that promotion of more widespread knowledge of Greenlandic would be driven the desire for unity rather than for emphasizing division. Another obvious criticism is the practicality of teaching Greenlandic to hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. Greenlandic is not an easy language and face-to-face teaching is likely to yield much better results than using the currently quite limited online resources. But there are few Greenlandic teachers available through the handful of small organisations who offer Greenlandic courses. To require all public administration employees to learn Greenlandic, it needs to be practically possible for them to do so.
I am not particularly strong in learning languages but I certainly think it is both reasonable and sensible to require public administration employees to learn the national language of the country in which they live and whose community they serve. Doing so – even to a limited extent – means more effective communication, the ability to understand cultural nuances, to empathize, to share a joke. If it can be done, and in a way that promotes unity, I am all for it.
