526 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



in my paper on " the D^ne Languages,"^ and in my forthcoming com- 

 plete grammar of the Carrier language. Furthermore, all the following 

 remarks shall apply more particularly to the idiom of the western 

 Nah'ane, the only one I have ever studied. 



Neglected by the ethnographers as the Nah'ane have remained to 

 this day, their dialect has still been more of a terra incognita to the 

 philologists. With not even the least grammatical note has it been 

 honoured so far in all the linguistic literature at my command, and the 

 only vocabulary by which it has ever been represented in scientific pub- 

 lications consists of the four columns of Thaihthan words printed by the 

 late Dr. Dawson.^ 



And here I may be allowed to state that, after a careful study of 

 their language, I have had the satisfaction of ascertaining that of all the 

 corrections in the latter's vocabulary which I lately declared^ were de- 

 manded by the general rules of Dene phonetics and suggested by my 

 knowledge of the other related dialects, not one have I found to be un- 

 warranted. 



Before going further I must also correct the one statement Dr. 

 Dawson makes concerning their language. Speaking of the Thaihthan 

 and Taku Nah'ane, he writes: "These Indians speak a language very 

 similar to that of the Al-ta-tin, if not nearly identical with it, and so far 

 as I have been able to learn, might almost be regarded as forming an 

 extension of the same division. They appear to be less closely allied 

 by language to the Kaska, with which people they are contiguous to the 

 eastward."^ 



I have already done justice to the latter assertion. By Al-ta-tin, 

 Dr. Dawson means the Lh'ta'tin, or " People of the beaver dams," as the 

 Tse'kehne are called by the Carriers. His notion about the similarity 

 of the two dialects I have found prevalent in other quarters. To prove 

 its utter groundlessness, I need but reproduce here the Nahane and the 

 Tse'kehne versions, for instance, of the doxology. Was the Chippe- 

 wayan version available, I have no doubt that it would be found more 

 alike to that of the Tse'kehne than to that of the Nah'ane. Grammati- 

 cally speaking, there is more affinity between the Tse'kehne and the 

 Chippewayan — two very distinct tribes — than between the Tse'kehne 

 and the Nah'ane. 



1 Transactions Canadian Institute, Vol. 1. 



2 Notes on the northern portion of British Columbia, p. 19. et seq, 



3 Transactions Canadian Institute, Vol. VI., pp. 99-100. 



4 Notes, etc., p. 2. 



