215 



other words, about the language of the western Central Eskimo, 

 the information is too scanty for us to draw any conclusions 

 about the peculiarities of these dialects. 



With regard to the Eskimo at Smith Sound, Dr. Boas is 

 of the opinion that they occupy an intermediate position. He 

 is inclined to consider their arts similar to those of the Central 

 Eskimo, while their language seems to be nearer to that of 

 Greenland*). Very little is known about their language. The 

 geologist R. Stein, who had an opportunity to hear it on his 

 expedition up there, has given us some information about the 

 phonetical character of this dialect, information which testifies 

 to better phonetical insight than is usually met with in arctic 

 explorers**). That is why it makes the more impression on 

 me, when he maintains that the dialect, in addition to the usual 

 unvoiced s-sound, has a voiced s [z] as in German "reisen". 

 He gives several examples of it: taskiza resembUng a lake, 

 qablu'zen resembhug eyebrows (plur.), uyazuhsu (cf. Gr. ujaraq a 

 stone), гзо-0£/г5оа "Meereuge", etc., all place-names, whose meaning, 

 however, can be partly understood. This voiced z, then, is 

 probably the middle stage on the transition from the j of the 

 Labrador language to the West Greenlandic unvoiced s. 



Just as in the Baffin language, the final consonants in the 

 Smith Sound language are generally nasal; the words end in 

 72, ^ and n instead of g, к and f. It is probably an 12 that 

 Stein describes when he speaks of a nasalized ''КеЬИаиГ' in 

 the name which he first wrote Imn^wrene but corrected, after 

 he had heard it oftener, to Ьпп^ачгдапепд (with the same sound 

 in the final position as in the body of the word). I presume 

 that the sound in question is the same uvular nasal (т^) as I 

 heard in the two northernmost districts in West Greenland 



') Eskimo of ÜafÄii Land and Hudson Bay, p. 35.5. 

 *•) Cf. IntroducUoii III, 1, Nr. 25— 26. 



