13 



scientific training in tliat group of the European languages to 

 which my mother tongue belongs. 



In this ^vork, I have tried to counteract all uncertainty and 

 inaccuracy by aiming to give an exact description of the sounds 

 of the language as I heard them, together ^vith a consistent 

 system of phonetical transcription. My sound-symbols were not 

 unchangeably established all at once as if by manifest, but they 

 -were time and again altered and adjusted under the influence of 

 my direct phonetical experiments in Greenland. They have been 

 chosen with especial consideration for those sound-symbols 

 which are gradually winning an established place in phonetical 

 science. I felt convinced that only by proceeding in accordance 

 with that scientific tradition which has raised the science of 

 phonetics to the place Avhich it occupies today could I expect 

 to make this work be of any importance for students of 

 general comparative philology. Of course it was sometimes 

 necessary for me to find a (new) particular symbol for a new 

 sound of constant occurrence which I wished to isolate from 

 the other better known sounds; at other times again I had 

 begun by using an unusual symbol and ended by changing it 

 to a more usual one, when I came to realize that the sound 

 was after all nearly related to a known sound in a known 

 language. Modern phonetical science, as is Avell known, chooses 

 its sound-symbols as far as possible in agreement with the current 

 or average usage of the symbols in the chief European languages 

 (with the exception of Bell's Visible Speech). I have of course 

 followed this principle in reproducing the Eskimo speech-sounds; 

 1 have also, like the phoneticians, taken the liberty of adopting 

 some few symbols from (jtlier languages without regard for their 

 peculiar use in the languages fr(trn which they are taken. 1 

 therefore want to caution here against any misunderstanding of 

 the Greek letters which I have employed. The fact that I have 

 used them does not imply that there is any special resemblance 

 between the Eskimo and the Greek languages ; Å and и (just 



