Want to go to C-C-mute?

In Greenland, young people and kids are using a lot of chat language in their daily communications, when they are MSN-ing and chatting on the Internet — and have developed a special language all their own.

“But we don’t have to worry,” said university student, Lona Lynge, who studies at Ilisimatusarfik, Greenland’s university, in Nuuk.

“Of course, their language is developing. They are only playing with words and do it in their free time, and even they talk to each other like they write, so we don’t have to worry that it will have impact on the Greelandic language,” 27-year old Lynge told the Sermitsiaq newspaper.

Chat language is a new area of research, she said.

“I’ve started studying the Greenlandic chat language which has not been investigated in depth before,” Lynge said.

Chat language is used only on private e-mails and messages, she said, and sent through the Internet and Internet relay chat.

Some examples include:

C-C-mute, (“Sisimiut” — a community’s name — in English, written as pronounced with an English accent);

Tuchats Laater (“Tusaqqissaagut,” we will hear from each other again, or “tusalaa”: shortening of “hear from you in a bit again” and the English word “later”).