112 



The Eskimo uvularized or uvular vowels really contain a 

 distinct vowel element and a distinct consonant element. They 

 stand therefore, as it were, at the boundary between these two 

 chief classes of speech-sounds, or they may perhaps be regarded 

 as constituting by themselves a third class of sounds occupying 

 an intermediate position between the vowels and consonants. 



The Greenlandic Eskimo language does not make use of 

 any real [y] (as in French tu, rue, Danish ny, German früh) 

 or [0] or [Ö] (as in French peu, Danish sød; French seul, 

 Danish son, German schön). The Eskimo sounds which lie 

 nearest to these are [il y] and [э] , vowels between и — у and 

 — Ö, pronounced with the lips only slightly rounded ; they 

 seldom occur long. — The Eskimo wide [c] is generally nearer 

 the narrow [г] than is the case with the sound in English hit, 

 fill, in (in Danish lidt, find); the e-sound is always narrow, 

 even more so than in French été. There is no pure long i. — 

 The mid vowel э occurs but seldom, and never as a final as in 

 our languages. The sound is as a rule slightly uvularized in 

 the Eskimo language, (here indicated by the symbol [ejl and as 

 such is not easy to distinguish from the other uvularized e- 

 sounds. — Of the «-like sounds, the [c] which is influenced 

 by q is the most peculiar because it lies so far back in the 

 mouth. About in the middle of the mouth lies the half-wide [ä], 

 which approximates the French [æj-sound in fête, but it must 

 be noted that it is short. — A mid-?' occurs, I think, sometimes 

 before [A- z^-] and [/•], but 1 do not know if it occurs spora- 

 dically or regularly. 



§ 15. In trying to determine the Eskimo vowels according 

 to Bell's and Sweet's*) systems, I have come to the following 



*) H. Sweet: A Primer of Phonetics. Oxford 1892. paa. 21. 



