226 TRIBES AND DIALECTS OF CONNECTICUT [eth. ann. 43 



PHONETIC NOTE 



The characters which are used to represent the sounds in this 

 dialect are those advocated in the report of the Committee on Lin- 

 guistics of the Bureau of American Ethnology.' The specific values 

 of these in Mohegan-Pequot are as follows: 



Vowels: 



a, open, medium. 



a, open, medium, like u in English but. 

 i', long, closed, like ee in English queen. 

 i, short, as in English pin. 



0, u, open, medium, and only slightly differentiated as finals. 

 0', open, long, like a in English ball. 

 Consonants: 



b, d, z, g, sonants as in English. 

 p, t, s, k, surds as in English. 

 m, n, as in English. 



C, surd as s/i in English. 



dj, sonant affricative, like dg in English edge 



tc, surd affricative, like ch in English church. 



Tj, palatal, like ng in English song. 

 ai, oi, au, are true diphthongs. 



h, w, y, semivowels, as in English. (When h precedes w, the aspiration is indi- 

 cated by rough breathing '.) 

 Stress accent is noted bj' '. 



Consonants in juxtaposition which are to be pronounced as sepa- 

 rate sounds are divided by the apostrophe ', denoting a pause, as 

 Ir't'ca, in which fc is pronounced as though it were t + sh in English. 



It is to be remarked that several familiar Algonkian properties are 

 unusual or wanting in this dialect; for instance, among vowels short i, 

 as in English pin, is rare; and also e, both long and short (as a in 

 English gate and as in English niet), is wantmg. It is not so unusual, 

 though it presents a mark of individuality of Mohegan-Pequot, that 

 I is wantmg and is replaced by y in words which are cognate with 

 those of other Algonkian r, n, or 1 dialects. The replacement operates 

 in the case of n in the neighbormg and contiguous members of the 

 southern New England group, Narragansett-Massachusetts. 



No doubt the phonetic qualities of the dialect have been somewhat 

 corrupted by a long period of contact with the English; yet there 

 seems little doubt but that the positive characteristics encountered 

 are genuine features. By way of comparison we may observe that 

 this dialect is phoneticallj^ uniform with the other southern New 

 England divisions except for the y distinction in the transposition of 

 r, I, n, y, a feature in tliis area corresponding to the same thing in 

 the Cree-Montagnais family and apparently also in southeastern 



I Smithsonian Miscellaneous Publications, vol. 06, pp. 120-126 (1916). 



