1877.] ^^9 [Gatschet. 



his writings wei'e printed there, corrected and revised the proof sheets. 

 The Spanish version is neither verbal nor faithful, often half, often 

 twice as long as the Timucua text, and very frequently misleads the studi- 

 ous reader. Hence the utmost caution must be used in making researches 

 on the idiom. 



In spite of all these imperfections, Pareja's volumes are the most pre- 

 cious relics of Floridian antiquity. The texts often make two vocables out 

 of one, or erroneously combine two distinct ones into one ; but soon the 

 student becomes accustomed to this caprice and enabled to righten the or- 

 thography himself. The books and titles are miuulely described by Mr. 

 B. Smith in New York Historical Magazine, 1858 and 1860, and on page 

 3, of the volume of 1858 he gives also some eighty Timucua words, mainly 

 from the Confessionario, with their meanings. For the correctness of 

 some of them I am unable to vouch. The Tinqua language mentioned by 

 Ludewig (Literature of Am. L. ), is a blunder, instead of the correct fonii 

 Timuqiin. 



Phonetic Elements. 



Timucua syllables are composed from single phonetic elements with re- 

 markable simplicity. They either consist of a vowel only or more generally 

 of a consonant followed by a vowel, and syllables terminating in an s, a nasal 

 or other consonant are of rare occurrence (7M6;/as<«, mantn i. The language 

 has a quite numerous and complete series of sounds, and since Pareja does 

 not use any diacritical marks on his Spanish letters, we might infer that it 

 had about as many sounds as the Spanish alphabet, omitting the II, x, z 

 and j, D and g are scarce and of diphthongs none existed, excepting per- 

 haps an. The h probably remained silent in most words where we find it, 

 and stands there only to indicate hiatus of two vowels : Ichuue for le-aue, 

 bohono for bo-o/io, and was equally silent at the beginning of words : 

 habosota ; hachibono (frequently written acMbono). There was only one 

 palatal ch (our tch) standing either for tch or for the softer dsTi. Qu or q is 

 our A; the (/ii or English ic, so frequently occurring in Indian languages 

 transcribed by Spaniards, does not occur here. Unfortunately the "Arte'' 

 of Pareja, which alone could inform us of his mode of transliteration au- 

 thentically, is lost, perhaps forever, but from what we have we may safely 

 conclude that no clicks, very rough guttural sounds or jaw-breaking clus- 

 ters of consonants entered into the structure of this remarkably sonorous 

 idiom, which possessed the following twenty-one articulations : 



Vowels : u, o, a, e, i. 



Consonants : k, g, t, d, p, b, tch, f, h, y, s, v, m, n, r, 1. 



In vocalism the nearest approximation to Timucua is made by some 

 Polynesian tongues, f i., that of the Sandwich Islands, by the Matlaltzinca 

 or Pirinda of Michoacan and by the Tonto, spoken on middle Gila River, 

 Arizona. Perhaps one-third of all words begin Avith vowels. The most 

 frequent initial consonants are k, n, m, p. R and some other consonants 

 do not begin any words, and it is somewhat doubtful if this r is our rolling 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XVI. 99. 4a 



