322 



any distinction between к and q in his writinj;. What I espe- 

 cially want to call attention to is this: 



1) lie makes no distinction between y [g] and ng [//], al- 

 though he must have learned in school to use the letters ng 

 for the latter sound : he writes g everywhere ; in other words, 

 as a North Greenlander, he makes no difference between those 

 two sounds in his pronunciation, but pronounces [^J where the 

 South Greenlander would pronounce [g]. In a similar way, he 

 writes Ь in Niwabar (November) for the corresponding nasal (m), 



2) Just as he only has one symbol for к and ^, he has 

 only one symbol for / and /, although in his pronunciation, 

 he of course makes a distinction between the two sounds. 

 His feeling that >^ is a single sound is more correct than the 

 t//, tl^ gdl of Kleinschmidt's orthography. 



3) Just as he uses 6 or p at random, there seems to b\t 

 no rule for his use of the vowels e and г, о and и. 



4) He indicates no modifications of the vowels, neither 

 labialization (a^, г'", u^")^ palatalization (a') nor uvularization. 

 Especially the last of these omissions is of interest. He does 

 not write ar^ er, or, but merely o, ^, o, (or г, w), and this Is 

 no doubt because he does not hear any r after the vowel in 

 these cases, but correctly feels the sound ar etc. to be a 

 whole. 



5) He does not indicate the quantity of the sounds except 

 once (teguvakka, kk=[k'\]. 



6) The hiatuses ea, io are filled by a 7, ?ш, ne by a r, 

 which are glide-sounds testifying to his slow manner of pro- 

 nouncing. 



7) Only his own name is spelled according to the con- 

 ventional orthography {gs^kt). 



