206 H. Rink. 



A peculiarity which strikes us at once is that the differences 

 in the expressions do not so much lie in the use of new and foreign 

 roots, as in circumscriptions with the help of other well-known 

 roots and suffixes, for which the remarkable Greenland word-con- 

 struction affords such abundant resources. The author of the notes 

 furnishes us at once in his introductorj'^ remarks with an explana- 

 tion of the most important of these divergences, namely the native 

 custom in cases of death of avoiding the mention of the names of 

 deceased persons, and consequently, when the latter are derived 

 from designations of well-known objects or ideas, for the time 

 entirely changing or circumscribing these designations. It is, however, 

 obvious, that this custom, which is also known from other Eskimo 

 countries, must everywhere have had a certain limit, as otherwise 

 the language must have changed altogether, and in the course of 

 years a general confusion must have taken place among its dialects. 

 In the first place, the change of a word like this cannot have been 

 extended to all the words derived from it; secondly it must have 

 been restricted to a certain period of time, and a certain circle of 

 friends and acquaintances of the deceased, in conformity with other 

 mourning customs. No doubt, the rules as to this must have diff- 

 ered among the different Eskimo tribes, and to judge by all the 

 specimens of language and other information, we know of no tribe 

 in which they may be deemed to have had such an extensive and 

 sweeping influence, as among the people of Angmagsalik. 



According to the conclusions arrived at by Captain Holm, they 

 keep this mourning custom so consistently that they actually den}^ 

 their knowledge of words with which one has every reason to be- 

 lieve they are familiar. This will be illustrated by many examples 

 in the following, but it is especially conspicuous in derived words 

 and above all in place names, in which latter case, however, they 

 have been unable to carry out the prescriptions. The cause of this 

 unique development of this mourning custom in East Greenland must 

 be sought in the people's isolation. Had the Expedition not pos- 

 sessed a more intimate knowledge of the language than that of 

 most travellers who have supplied us with glossaries from other 

 Eskimo countries, its lexlcographal work would certainly have also 

 exhibited a good deal of confusion. 



In order to show the significance of the divergences of the East 

 Greenland dialect from that of West Greenland, it has been neces- 

 sary also partially to include the other Eskimo dialects in the com- 

 parison. This seemed to be the only way to show which of the 

 mutually divergent expressions was the commonest. Further, the 

 alphabetical order in the Greenlandic dictionary had lo be changed 



