by Mingming Shi
1) CBC News reported that the Inuktitut language would be added to the translation program operated by Microsoft, which has already provided such programming for over seventy other languages. Through this software, users can translate Inuktitut to and from other languages. Inuktitut itself is spoken by around 40,000 Inuit in Northern Canada.
2) As The Barents Observer revealed, coal remains the major export for the Russian Arctic city of Murmansk and many other northern parts of the country. Despite the increasing number of coal exports from the region 2020, with growing demand for alternative fuel sources and diminishing demand from Europe, the industry will reportedly soon experience a difficult period.
3) According to the Icelandic news service RÚV, Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir, a local expert on the Icelandic language, explained in her Master’s thesis at the University of Iceland, entitled ‘Fáðu þér eina smellý og chillaðu broski’ (‘Get yourself a smoke and chill out, bro’), that the slang from English used amongst youth in Iceland has become more commonplace in the past two decades, with some words or phrases either borrowed directly or slightly changed to Icelandic. The author is not completely certain, however, about how the use of English slang will affect the future the Icelandic language.
4) The Nordic House in Tórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, received the Green Key eco-label as a reward for its environmentally friendly operations, as written in Local.fo.
5) An article in Icelandic which introduced the life stories of Hans Egede, mainly from the perspective of his connections with Greenland, was published on Kjarninn. The author detailed how Hans Egede converted Inuit peoples in Greenland to Christianity, and his other activities on the island. He was a Danish-Norwegian missionary who voyaged to Greenland in 1721, 300 years ago this year, and was the founder of Nuuk (formerly Godthåb), the capital of the nation, in 1728.
Over the Circle 