396 



VOCABULARIES OF NORTH AMERICA. 



The vocabularies which follow were made by gentle- 

 men whose system of orthography varies more or less from 

 that adopted in the preceding pages. The dialects of the 

 Dog-ribs who resort to Great Bear Lake, and of those 

 who hunt on Marten Lake and visit Fort Simpson, differ 

 little when spoken, and offer no difficulty to an interpreter 

 who is acquainted with either; but many of the words have 

 a very different aspect when written in English characters ; 

 and these tables may serve to illustrate a remark made in 

 a preceding page respecting the difficulty which an En- 

 glish ear experiences in apprehending the sounds of the 

 Tinne languages. The Kutchin words collected by Mr. 

 M'Murray, though not numerous, show a close affinity 

 between the language spoken by that people and the 



