1889-90.] THE DExi: languages. 179 



tance, morosity, displeasure, etc. When moved by any of these or 

 cognate sentiments, he will never say but : stzi ndtcta,^' my heart is sick." 

 In like manner, such widely different moral qualities as goodness, 

 beauty, handsomeness, holiness, liberality, magnanimity, benignity, 

 sweetness, etc., not only cannot be expressed under their abstract form, 

 but even when presented in a concrete shape, as a personal attribute, 

 they have no other synonyms in D^nd than uzu, " he is good." 



Genuine synonyms in those languages are exceedingly rare. In fact 

 I hardly know of any two words employed in one village to express 

 exactly the same object or action. Homonyms there are, but even these 

 are wonderfully scarce. Quite a number of words would indeed pre- 

 sent to the unobservant linguist appearances of phonetical identity ; but 

 no native ear will ever mistake, for instance, j"«, "sun" iov sa\ "a long 

 time ;" ntsi, " your head," for 7itsi\ " he is bad," etc. 



On the other hand, owing to that synthetical disposition of most of 

 the Dene verbs, which is but imperfectly developed in our idioms, per- 

 fect equivalents between that language and ours are — barring those terms 

 which are roots in D^n^ — rarer than a hasty observer would at first 

 imagine. As a proof of this assertion, let me open at random my Diction- 

 ary of Carrier Verbs. One of the first words that falls under my eyes 

 is the French verb " Briller," to shine. As an equivalent, therefore, I 

 have written down pce-sa-udcenat. Now, while that term is certainly the 

 nearest synonymous word that could be found to render the idea repre- 

 sented by the French vocable, it must be confessed that it is more re- 

 stricted in its meaning. Pce-sa-udcenat (literally : " the sun strikes it ") 

 denotes a kind of brilliancy caused by the reflection of the solar rays 

 upon a polished surface, and could but improperly be used in connection 

 Avith an object shining at night through the agency of fire or some other 

 cause. 



A little lower down, in the same column of my dictionary, I find the 

 word " Bris^ (etre)," to be broken. In spite of its 150,000 or so verbal 

 terms, the Carrier vocabulary does not contain a single genuine equiva- 

 lent therefor. But, to compensate for the lack of that term, what a pro- 

 digious exuberance of differentiating forms ! Here I must respectfully 

 demand of the detractors of Indian languages a moment of attention. In 

 lieu of the single Aryan term, the A'Tierican dialect under review pos- 

 sesses no less than 110 particularizing substitutes, not one of which could 

 be indifferently used for the other. They are expressive of — ist, the ob- 

 ject employed to operate the breakage, viz., the fists or the feet, a stick or 

 a whip, or of the cause of such action as the wind, the explosion of fire- 

 arms, etc.; 2nd, the manner in which the object has been affected, that 



