288 SOME LAWS OP PHONETIC CHANGE 



lished an article comparing the Basque with the Iroquois, failed to 

 find the grammatical accordance of the languages borne out by the 

 lexicon. This, however, arose from the fact that M. Vinson had 

 not made a special study of the Iroquois, and that he had neglected 

 the geographically intermediate languages which, in some respects, 

 furnish the key to the common origin of the Iroquois and the 

 Basque. 



I. — In a large number of instances, .although there are many 



EXCEPTIONS, THE IROQUOIS EEPLACES THE BASQUE LIQUIDS I AND V 

 BY ANOTHER LIQUID, tl. 



Take, for example, the Iroquois word for tooth, honozzia, onotchia. 

 It is easy to perceive the relationship between these forms and the 

 innotay, noti, of the Choctaw, the ente of the Natchez, the noto of 

 the Shoshonese, and even the neas, nay ha, of the Lenca. But 

 where, it may be asked, is the similarity between these names for 

 tooth and that of the Yuma, which is aredoche ? The Basque dis- 

 plays the relation. Its word for tooth is hortz, ortz, or, in the plural, 

 hortzac, ortzac. The unaspirated ortz, somewhat drawn out as is 

 generally the case in the pronunciation of uncivilized man who has 

 abundance of time for his conversation, becomes, without any conso- 

 nantal change worth noting, the Yuma aredoche. If, however, we 

 apply the rule which transforms the Basque r into the Iroquois n, 

 then ortz becomes ontz, and hortz, the aspirated Labourdin and Bas- 

 Navarrais form of the word, hontz, thus furnishing us with abbrevi- 

 ated but distinctly recognizable equivalents of the Iroquois onotchia 

 and honozzia. In the Kasi Kumuk dialect of the Lesghian the 

 Basque aspirate is strengthened into k, kertshi being its rendering of 

 hortz. Indeed it may almost be said to be a rule that the Basque 

 aspirate, as an initial letter at least, becomes the Lesghian guttural. 

 The Quichua of Peru follows the same rule, and surpasses the 

 Lesghian in its attenuation of the vowel, by changing kertshi to kiru. 

 Thus the two forms onotchia and kiru, which appear to present no 

 feature in common, are found to have the same origin. 



A similar instance is that of the Iroquois kelanquaw, which de- 

 notes the moon, but also the sun. The Pueblo word for sun is 

 hoolenwah, with which the Yukahiri name for the same orb, yelonsha, 

 invites comparison. But in the Basque the equivalent for kelan- 

 quaw, the moon, is hilaryia ; and, just as the Yuma aredoche cor- 



