150 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ VoL. III. 
greater relief the similarity or even identity of the root words which 
compose it. 
I, One great principle of the Déné phonetics which should never be 
lost sight of is that in those dialects, as in the ancient Semitic tongues, 
the vowels are transmutable, and therefore, except in a very few 
cases, no importance whatever should be attached to them. To still 
better illustrate this peculiarity, I have gone to the trouble of writing 
down after each separate set of synonyms the real root (marked RR.) 
which lies at the bottom of each of them. Had I crowded said lists 
with all the roots which I had at my disposal, the evidence of this 
principle would have been still more apparent. Initial consonants, that 
is those which begin azy syllable, contain the quintessence of the word, 
sometimes in common with the final consonant which, however, may 
be said to have but a relative importance. 
2. Of the radical consonants, some are interchangeable in any single 
dialect through the whole linguistic stock to such an extent that they 
are not differentiated by the natives of any tribe. To this class belong 
Band P) 7 and D;K and.G, Tj and Kyor7Ki A Déné ear perceives 
no difference whatever between, for instance pés and bés, “knife;” ta and 
da, “lip;” ku and gu,“ worm;” ?/a and k’/a, “bottom.” Such is not the case 
with transmutable consonants of the second class. These are invariable 
within the vocabulary of the dialect which they characterize, but change 
from tribe to tribe. Pronounce, for example in the presence of a Carrier 
Indian the word Na-kra-zili-’ten and he will at once understand you as 
saying in his own idiom, “people of Na’kraztli” or Stuart’s Lake. 
Change it now into Wa-’kra-ztli-'gin. He will still understand you, but 
will remark that you now speak in a different dialect and if he is at all 
acquainted with the idiom of the Sikanais, he will recognize that word 
as belonging to it. Radical consonants of this class are ’¢ which is 
convertible into ’g, ?s, into ’#w and’g; ¢s into kw, kfw and tc. Ina 
few cases, initial 7 is also convertible into y, and small bands of Rocky 
Mountain Dénés as well as the large tribe of the Loucheux or Ku-tchin* 
likewise change the original common to all the dialects into a regular 
v which is proper to themselves. Therefore the phonetic difference 
between such words as afsz, ekfwd and zfc7 is more apparent than real. 
They are all the monosyllable /s? modified by the phonology of the 
Hare and a few other tribes into £/wz, while the Loucheux change the 
zs into its co-relative Zc and say 7fcz. 
3. As for the initial vowels a, e, z, to which we should add the prefixes 
*Pronounce, Azt-’g27. 
