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Indian Lan^uazes in J^ortli America. » 323 



and the interestiag work of his experienced and worthy fellow-la- 

 bourer, the Uev. Mr. Heckewelder. Tliese publications alone, 

 which are too well known to need a more particular notice in this 

 place, abundantly show, what a vast field is now i 



show, what a vast field is now opening to those 

 w ho wish to search into the philosophy of language, and to study 

 man through the medium of his noblest and peculiar faculty of 

 speech ; and, at the same time that they do honour to our country, 

 they will be read by the scholars of Kurope, especinlly the learned 

 Germans, with all that avidity which the characters of their authors 

 will naturally excite. For ray own part, I acknowledge, that they 

 have occasioned my taking a deeper interest in this apparently 

 dry and barren subject, than I could have believed to be possible 

 in any one, however devoted he might be to philological pursuits ; 

 and I have, in consequence, been for a time allured from old and 

 favourite studies, to which I had intended to allot the whole of 

 that little leisure which I could spare from the duties of my pro- 

 fession. 



At the very commencement of my inquiries, however, T found 



my progress impeded by a capricious and ever varying orthogra- 

 jphj of the Indian languages, not only among the writers of 

 ft rent nations, but even am.ing those of the same country. I have, 

 therefore, while examining words in one Indian dialect with a 

 view to comparing them with those of another, been obliged to 

 employ much time in first settling the spelling of a wriiten word, 

 in order to ascertain the sound of the spoken word ; when 1 ought 

 to have found njilhing more to be necessary than to make the com- 

 parison, which 1 happened to have in view, between words whose 

 sounds should have presented themselves upon the first inspection 

 of their icritten characters. But with the present irre 



ol writing Indian words, unless a reader is conversant with the 



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