OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



175 



"Mr. Hale's notation txl for an allied independent Chinook glottal 

 is defective, the sound in question being difficult and of a deeper con- 

 tact, whilst his combination is an easy one. An author, however, who 

 would knowingly omit or replace a letter as important as the French 

 w, must have had but little inclination to analyze the peculiarities of 

 speech which his unusual opportunities threw into his way. 



" In the Teutonic languages, the nature of syllables is not appreci- 

 ated, as it is in the more highly refined French, in which the rhythmic 

 sense has attained its highest development. The English words 

 rock, hut, top, would be correctly considered dissyllables in French ; 

 as the escape of the breath at their close takes the place of a vowel, 

 or a liquid consonant. The English word luck is exactly the Chinese 

 -word for six, except that in the former it is a dissyllable (l-k") and in 

 the latter a monosyllable (bk'), the breath not being allowed to escape 

 after k. The same thing takes place with p and t in Chinese. 



"Unless accent and quantity are marked, a language must be 

 known to be read, and such an omission has enabled Mr. Ellis to 

 give quasi phonetic specimens of three times more languages than he 

 received from legitimate sources.* On account of this omission, a 

 speaking knowledge of Lenape or Delaware cannot be acquired from 

 Zeisberger's German transcription. For example, he writes the num- 

 eral five, palenach, which, as a word in German characters, would 

 probably be accented on the first syllable, with the vowels short. Let 

 the reader pronounce the supposed word, and then compare it with 

 the true one. The vowels are as in cart and lay ; the second syllable 

 takes the grave accent ; the length of the syllables is respectively two, 

 five, and three eighths of a second ; the final ch is deeper than the 

 German, and it is triilled, and followed by k\ 



" The want of a proper notation renders a paper of this kind un- 

 satisfactory and difficult to print, and on this account I have limited 

 the number of examples, and avoided diacritical marks. I commu- 

 nicated some remarks upon the Phonology of the Wyandots to the 

 American Philosophical Society, which may be found in their Pro- 

 ceedings for 1846, Vol. IV. p. 268. I have taken oral specimens, from 

 natives, of nine aboriginal American languages, five of which are un- 



* He marks the accent in English, when it cannot be determined by the posi- 

 tion of fifteen letters which he enumerates. He uses the acute accentual only, 

 whether the co-accented consonant precedes or follows the vowel. 



