178 



qanoq-ip-a > gano7i-ip-a^*). In my notes, there are many 

 examples of these nasal changes. 



§ 30. Like all other children, the little Eskimo children 

 have difficulty in learning to talk plainly. I have unfortunately 

 not taken many notes about the child-language, but yet I have 

 a few, which are worth considering. 



Thomas had just arrived at Sermiarsuit with his sledge 

 on a visit to his brothers-in-law. While he was standing out- 

 side of the house waiting for some one to ask him in, he was 

 practising hitting the dogs with his whip. When he hit one 

 of them so that it howled loudly , he said : kcsame niaqua 

 awera-, finally his head began to pain him ! A little boy who 

 had been looking on repeated his words, but he pronounced 

 the last word: an-iria-. On another occasion, I heard a little 

 fellow say: рШода-ца instead oï putoqa-ra (I got a hole made 

 in it). 



There are some Greenlanders who never learn to talk 

 plainly. They are found here and there among the others, 

 who call them kutät'ut , an expression which contemptuously 

 classes them with little children who have not yet learned to 

 talk plainly. There are certain sounds in the language which 

 they cannot pronounce, or at least only with great difficulty. 

 1 think it is most frequently the women who, aside from the 

 children, have these defects in pronunciation; they are more 

 rarely found among men. 



In a certain part of Greenland, this phenomenon is espe- 

 cially prominent, namely in the JJpernawik District. I was 

 told that there were Eskimo settlements north of the colony of 



*) "лхепп ein mil einem vocal anfangendes \\ort ohne pause drauf folgt, 

 doch ist dies nicht durchsehende regel, sondern nur gewohnheit einzelner, 

 besonders der weiber." Kl. Gr. g .j, cf. Paul Egede's Gr. Gh. I, 3 — 4. 

 ' how is he? 



