CHUKCHEE 



By Waldemar Bogoras 



INTRODUCTION 



The material for the following study was collected by me in 1895-97, 

 when I was a member of the Sibiryakov Expedition of the Russian 

 Imperial Geographical Society; and in 1900-01, when I was engaged 

 in anthropological researches for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition 

 of the American Museimi of Natural History. 



The group of languages treated in this sket( h includes the Chuk- 

 chee, the Koryak, and the Kamchadal. Of these, the first two are 

 closely related, while the Kamchadal shows markedly divergent 

 forms. Its phonetics are more complicated than those of the other 

 two languages, and it seems to have preserved some ancient traits. 

 Its morphology, however, is obscured by the recent process of Rus- 

 sianization, which has had a marked influence upon the language of 

 the people. 



Since I spent several years among the Chukchee on the Kolyma and 

 Anadyr, and attained full command of the language in a practical 

 manner, my Chukchee material is much fuller and also more accurate 

 than that collected in the other languages. The work on the Chuk- 

 chee is also facilitated by the fact that the language has no dialects, 

 the dialect of the maritime Chukchee of the Pacific coast being almost 

 identical with that of the reindeer-breeders of the Kolyma river. 



Besides grammatical and lexicographic data, 1 have collected a large 

 number of texts. I have also collected texts from the Asiatic Eskimo,^ 

 with literal translation into Chukchee, made by natives and carefully 

 revised with their aid, as a means of avoiding inexactness in the trans- 

 lation of the Eskimo material. 



> Some of these have been published in my paper, "The Eskimo of Siberia" (Publications of the 

 Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. viii, part iii). Leyden, E. J. Brill, 1913. 



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