12 



ment of dialect, just as, too, certain incidental moments have 

 not been without their significance. Finally one must also 

 mention here the superstitious dread among the Eskimos of 

 uttering the names of the dead, this having often occasioned 

 new formations, though these are nevertheless generally deriv- 

 ations from originally Eskimo root words. 



Within the limits of Danish Greenland the language falls 

 into two principal groups which, from their most prominent 

 phonetic differences, may be called the l and I or -vf- and -gk- 

 Groups ; the first is spoken by the Greenlanders of the W.-Coast, 

 from Umanaq to Arsuk inclusive, that is, from about 71° — 62°, 

 the tract of country from 62° — 64° however, forming an inter- 

 mediate stage between it and the language of the southern 

 group ; this comes about as a result of the first Moravian 

 missionaries having drawn a good many Southerners up to 

 their Mission stations near Nyhernhut (64°), and to Lichtenfels 

 which lies 60 miles further S., and inducing ]them to settle 

 down there. 



S. of 62° we find the I Group, which again must be sub- 

 divided into three: 1) the Julianehaab District division, 2) the 

 S. E.-Greenlandic division, and 3) that of the inhabitants of 

 Angmagssalik. 



Concerning the I Group, there is only sparse information 

 to be gleaned, the reason of this being that, the first mission- 

 aries having settled down in the U Group, the language of this 

 latter became the written Greenlandic language and that of the 

 I Group grew to be regarded as a provincialism. 



We are acquainted with the dialect of the Angmagssalik 

 Group through Captain Holm, who wintered there on his 

 Konebaad's Expedition M in 1883 — 1885 and collected a wide 

 range of words from this remote-lying place, which material 

 was later handled by Dr. Rink. 



*) Konebaad — a kind of boat rowed by women. Lit.: woman's boat. 



