GRAMMAR OF THE KLAMATH LANGUAGE. 



INTRODUGTION. 



A few remarks on the structure of American languages, and on the 

 difficulties encountered in their study, will, I presume, be acceptable to the 

 studious at a time when the first grammar of the Klamath language ever 

 composed is presented to them. 



Students entering into the vast domain of American languages find 

 themselves puzzled and bewildered by many facts and peculiarities which 

 never occurred to them during their study of the classic tongues in which 

 Demosthenes and Cicero delivered their orations. Like other illiterate 

 languages, those of America bear within themselves phenomena which 

 appear to us as strange peculiarities and mysterious fancies, but also pre- 

 sent a grand and ttiscinating aspect like any product of nature undefiled 

 and unaltered by the artifice of man. 



Supei-ficial minds are easily repelled by the oddities of Indian sounds, 

 some of which are croaking or strongly nasalizing, partly faucal or other- 

 wise unpronounceable, and disagreeing in their phonetic rules and pecu- 

 liarities from all their former notions of language. But the educated, who 

 at once perceive that they have to deal with a problem of natural science, 

 readily comprehend that these freaks of human speech are worth a pene- 

 trating study. The phonetic side of an Indian language, in fact of any 

 language whatever, can be but very imperfectly acquired from books, and 

 what I offer below under "Pronunciation", "Mode of utterance", in the 

 phonologic section of the Grammar, should be considered as only an 

 attempt to do justice to the real utterance of this upland language. 



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