174 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. I. 



Man is toefie in Carrier, t(£7ii in Chifxohtin . Unk in Sdkanais ; tana in 

 Nabajo, and den^^ danc, denu, dine, dune in other eastern dialects. 



Beaver is called tsa, tse, tsi and tso, according to the dialect. 



Canoe is rendered by tsi, tse and tsu, relatively to the different tribes. 



Rain is translated chan, cJion and chicn in Carrier, Hare and Loucheux 

 respectively. 



Here the similarity of the consonants through the various dialects at 

 once strikes us as suggestive of philological affinity. Furthermore, a 

 searching analysis of the elements which concur in the formation of the 

 root will reveal the fact that the real radical for "man" in D^nd, considered 

 as a distinct linguistic stock, is t-n- or its equivalent d-n-, while that for 

 " beaver " is ts-, that for " canoe," ts-, and that for " rain " ch-n, the 

 hyphen replacing the vowels, which as we see, have but secondary 

 importance. 



As another instance of the preponderating role played by the conso- 

 nant, let us take for examination the Loucheux word Tan. A linguist 

 unmindful of the foregoing might, rather than compare it with the Car- 

 rier word Tce^fige, assign to it the same signification as the quasi-homony- 

 mous Chifxohtin Than. Now it happens that Tan means " four," while 

 Than means " three," the T simple running through all the dialects as the 

 chief formative element of the D^n^ terms for " four," (tceY^nge, tingi, 

 tinyi, tankre, tan, ti), whilst the Th performs the same function, with the 

 help of variable vowels and non-initial consonants, with regard to the 

 different words used to express our English " three," {tha, tJian, tJiake., 

 thaqe, thaye, thicg. 



From which remarks I think I am warranted in deducing the, to me, 

 self-evident conclusion that, in so far as the root words are concerned, 

 the phonetical graphic signs of the Dene languages might be reduced, as in 

 the ancient Semitic tongues, to the mere consonants. 



No kind of writing ever obtained among the Dends previous to the dis- 

 covery of their country. The missionaries tried to adapt to the language 

 of the Eastern tribes the syllabic characters invented by the late Mr. 

 Evans. But as one of them, a pioneer in the Dend linguistic field well 

 deserving of American scholars, the Rev. E Petitot, judiciously remarks : 

 " cet alphabet qui est parfaitement suffisant pour exprimer les 20 lettres 

 de la langue algonquine, est loin de repondre aux exigences de I'idiome 

 ddnd-dindjid qui compte comme nous I'avons vu 71 sons phonetiques."^ 



* Precis de Gravimaire comparie pp. XLIX. and L., Paris, Leroux idilextr, i876. Rev. 

 Petitot counts as different sounds those produced by doubled or consecutive letters as ss and tl 

 which circumstance accounts for the difference in our computation of the D6n^ phonetics. 



