The work examines the Tunumiisut (East Greenlandic) wordlist gathered by Johannes Balle (1889-1965) sometime in the first half of the 20th century. This little-known vocabulary, which includes equivalents in Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) and translations into Danish, offers valuable data from a time when information on Greenlandic dialects was scarce and difficult to obtain.
The present publication is a pioneering study. There is no previous scholarship on the wordlist, which exists in two copies held at the Royal Danish Library and the Danish Arctic Institute (Arktisk Institute). The author describes the historical context of Johannes Balle's life and the peculiarities of the linguistic data as presented in the wordlist. The main part of the study is the Tunumiisut wordlist re-arranged according to English keywords for historical and comparative purposes. Extensive indices arranged in the more traditional alphabetical order allow the reader to navigate easily through Tunumiisut, Kalaallisut, Proto-Inuit-Yupik and Proto-Inuit reconstructions, all of them cross-referenced with the English keywords.
Introduction by:
José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente
Edited by:
José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente
Imprint: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Wydawnictwo
Dimensions:
Height: 244mm,
Width: 170mm,
Spine: 12mm
Weight: 358g
ISBN: 9788323354833
ISBN 10: 8323354839
Pages: 220
Publication Date: 06 January 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of figures 7 Abbreviations (frequently used in the book) 9 Introduction 11 Johannes Balle 15 J. Balle’s wordlist from the perspective of Greenlandic philology 19 The wordlist 25 Formal considerations 25 J. Balle’s translations and English keywords 27 Cultural and linguistic remarks 29 Forms from Ittoqqortoormiit (Scoresbysund) 30 Acknowledgments 33 References 35 I Keywords and Etymology 47 II Tunumiisut(–Danish–Keyword) 119 III Kalaallisut(–Danish–Keyword) 155 IV Proto-Inuit-Yupik and Proto-Inuit reconstructions 193 V English keywords 211 VI Words of unclear origin, loanwords, and cultural terms [by keywords] 219
José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente (born 1982) is Associate Professor at the Institute of Linguistics, Translation Studies and Hungarian Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His main interests lie in historical linguistics, language contact and typology. He holds a PhD degree in Linguistics (2012) from the University of the Basque Country (Spain).
