552 SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



nunc, to give a satisfactory account of its grammatical construction. In the 

 few remarks which follow, 1 have taivcn as my guide Crantz's Account of tl.t; 

 language of Greenland, and have endeavoured to trace a resemblance or to 

 discover a ditference between the two, <is far as our knowledge enables us 

 to ascertain. They are in fact, however, so nearly allied to each other, that 

 it cannot but excite surprise to observe how slight a change time and distance 

 have been able to cflect in the language, as well as in the habits, of this 

 widely-scattered nation. 



One of the principal difficulties experienced by an European in acquiring 

 a knowledge of this language, arises from the constant blending of the several 

 words of a sentence into one, not simply by joining them loosely together, 

 but by a regular combination of the whole, according to fixed yet infmitely 

 varied rules. Of this peculiarity Crantz * has given an instance or two, 

 which, though extreme cases, serve to shew the kind of difficulty which 

 occurs in distinguishing the separate words of whicli such a sentence is com- 

 pounded. 



Several of our letters, taken according to the English mode of pronuncia- 

 tion, are not in use among these pcojile. The letter c may at all limes be 

 very well rcpresened by /c ; and /, j, q, v, x ; and z never, I believe, occur at 

 ad. Of about eiglit hundred words contained in the annexed Vocabulary, 

 1 can hud none beginning with the letters /j, d, g, I, r, ofiif. £) occurs 

 very seldom in the middle of a word, and d still more rarely ; and in most 

 cases these letters immediately precede the liquids / or r. It is worthy of 

 remark, that the only exception to this that I have met with occurs in three 

 «f the words used in the games already described, where the b is followed 

 by a vowel, as if, in the formation of these probably unmeaning words, as 

 well as in the mode of uttering them, something out of the common way 

 had been intended by the inventor. The letter/ being quite unknown to 

 them, the first attempt at the word " fife" produced " pipe," and it was not 

 till after mucli practice that they could pronounce even one of the f's with 

 distinctness. 



I have remarked above that / is not used at the beginning of a word ; for 

 though it thus occurs in the conjunction loo, yet as this is invariably placed at 



• II. 224, 225. 



■f The words so spelt by Crantz ai-e, according to the Engl i si i pronunciation, more accu- 

 rately expressed by Oo, as in 0(vang-a. Nearly the same remark applies to the v of the 

 Missionaries, for which, in English, w must be substituted. 



