#as opposed to to which degree it's danish idpol

[thevagueambition]

An linguistic shift is under way in Danish concerning how to refer to Greenland and the Faroe Islands

Traditionally, the preposition locating something in these locations is "on" – "There is a lot of ice on Greenland", "Tórshavn is a city on the Faroe Islands"

This is the preposition used for islands, but Islands that constitute their own nation are usually exempted – it's "In Australia" and "In Japan", but "On Orø", "On Bornholm", "On the Isle of Man."

There are exceptions though – we do typically say "on Iceland", "on Madagascar", "on Cuba", "on the British Isles" as well

In many of these cases, both "on" and "in" are considered grammatically correct.

This general distinction of sovereignty though, where some island typically nations get the "in" proposition and others do not, has led to the perception that using "on" about island nations is colonialist. This is why "in" is starting to be as common as "on" when referring to island nations that have historically taken the "on" preposition.

This discussion is most inflamed where it concerns Greenland due to the brutal colonialism inflicted on Greenland by Denmark. Saying "on Greenland" arguably denies Greenlandic sovereignty, and when that sovereignty is often diminished in general, that that preposition becomes a vessel for the condescending view on Greenland many Danes have.

Most journalists and media personalities seem to have gotten used to saying "in Greenland" over the last decade, but recently I've heard some of them saying "in the Faroe Islands" too. This often leads to segments where one speaker uses "on the Faroe Islands" while the other uses "in the Faroe Islands."

The colonial relationship between Denmark and the Faroe Islands is very, very different from that between Denmark and Greenland – the Danish-Faroese one has been almost solely economic and linguistic in nature and Faroese people have taken part in the exploitation of Greenland. This is partially why full independence is not as popular in the Faroe Islands as it is in Greenland and why this language shift that has been at least a decade under way in regards to Greenland is only now starting to set in regarding the Faroe Islands.

Anyway, the amount of meaning a preposition can encode is staggering to me.