BOAS] HANDBOOK OF INDIAN LANGUAGES CHUKCHEE 641 



The Kamchadal material that I have been able to collect is not very 

 full. The study of this dialect is at present very difficult on account 

 of its corruption by the introduction of Russian elements. 



In Krasheninnikoff's time there were three dialects of the Kamcha- 

 dal — a southern, an eastern (spoken on the Kamchatka river), and a 

 western. The first two are extinct, the language of the natives hav- 

 ing been replaced by Russian. The eastern dialect is spoken in 13 

 villages on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. The largest of these is 

 Kharghiusova (Kamchadal, Plo'xon), where I stayed 20 days. Another 

 dialect is spoken in the village Sedanka, on the upper course of the 

 Tighil river. Apart from phonetic differences, the chief features of 

 this dialect are due to a strong Koryak influence. This, however, is 

 also quite strong in the dialect of the Sea of Okhotsk. During the 

 last 50 years, Koryak reindeer breeders have been living on the 

 tundras of the eastern part of Kamchatka. The Kamchadal visit 

 them, and purchase from them reindeer meat and skins for clothing. 

 These Koryak are not Christianized, and speak only their own lan- 

 guage. Thus it happens that the Kamchadal of the eastern shore, as 

 far south as the village Kol, speak more or less the western Koryak 

 dialect (I); and that among the half -Russianized Kamchadal, remnants 

 of Koryak have almost completely replaced the old, native Kamcha- 

 dal. In a few folk stories, fragments of which I was able to collect, 

 the Kamchadal names have been forgotten, and Kor3^ak names have 

 taken their places. Sometimes it is not easy to determine whether we 

 are dealing with Kamchadal or with Koryak terms. In the Sedanka 

 dialect the influence of Koryak is felt even more markedly. The 

 people are in the habit of using whole Koryak sentences, or begin a 

 sentence in Kamchadal and end in Koryak. The dialect that has 

 influenced the Sedanka people is the Kamchatka Koryak 11.^ Besides, 

 there is a strong intrusion of Russian into both dialects. The Kam- 

 chadal has lost many of its numerals, several pronouns, and a consid- 

 erable number of nouns and adjectives, all of which have been replaced 

 by Russian terms. These have not been assimilated so as to conform 

 with the morphology of Kamchadal, but remain unaltered. A Rus- 

 sianization may also be observed in the grammatical structure. 



Nevertheless the Russian spoken by the Russianized natives of 

 Kamchatka also bears evidence of the influence of the Kamchadal. 



• Sedanka Kamchadal g'ava'telkal they perished {-Ik inchoative in Koryak II, -nivo in Koryak I) 

 »{<ri'titi HE WILL FREEZE TO DEATH {se- future prefix Koryak II, ye- in Koryak I). 



3045°— Bull. 40, pt. 2—12 41 



