228 



dor orthography. But here, in SW. Alaska, I am confronted 

 with an orthographical system in which there are undoubtedly 

 separate symbols for the uvular consonants, among others, for 

 [q] the most characteristic and most used of the East Eskimo 

 speech-sounds — and then how does it appear here? The 

 symbol that is used to indicate it is, at all events, extremely 

 rare, it never occurs as a final just as little as the symbol 

 for [rj ; in the final position we always find k, as in SWAl. 

 püyök — Gr. pujoq (but SWAl. puyöqkak, "what will be smoke", 

 a term for gunpowder, where q = [>•]? or qk = [q]?\. I shall 

 give some words that I have chosen at random: 



SWAl. 



kîy^ak boat 



kSln ten 



kavlut brow 



kem^qta dog 



kën'aka шу ne 



кёки clay 



If Ä- is in none of these cases intended to indicate the 

 uvular stopped consonant, then the Alaska language must cer- 

 tainly sound very different from Greenlandic. Furthermore this 

 supposition would also lead me to assume that the ^W. Alaskan 

 and the N. Alaskan dialects, where also only the symbol к is 

 used, likewise made only little use of the sound [7]. So if I 

 had started on my investigation from the west instead of from 

 the east, the Mackenzie dialect would be the first where this 

 sound played an important part. 



There is not the slightest indication in Harnum's work 

 that к might have any other sound-value, than that which it 

 has, for instance, in English. That the author, after having 

 lived so many years where this language is spoken, should 

 have been unable to distinguish between the sounds [k] and [q] 

 is scarcely credible. Yet, for the present, I shall wait and see 



WGr. 



SWAl. 





WGr. 



qajaq 



akkizhzhigik ptarmigan 



aqiç-eq 



qulit 



käpuk 



foam 



qapuk 



qa^Å'ut 



takak 



vein 



taqaq 



qinreq 



tökönak 



death 



toqo 



qiriak-a 



аЧак 



name 



ate^q 



qeqoq 



kanîqHok 



it snows 



qdn-erpoq 



