552 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



mine, to give a satisfactory account of its grammatical construction. In the 

 few remarks which follow, I have taken as my guide Crantz's Account of the 

 language of Greenland, and have endeavoured to trace a resemblance or to 

 discover a difference between the two, as far as our knowledge enables us 

 to ascertain. They are in fact, however, so nearly allied to each other, that 

 it cannot but excite surprise to observe how slight a change time and distance 

 have been able to effect in the language, as well as in the habits, of this 

 widely-scattered nation. 



One of the principal difficulties experienced by an European in acquiring 

 a knowledge of this language, arises from the constant blending of the several 

 words of a sentence into one, not simply by joining them loosely together, 

 but by a regular combination of the whole, according to fixed yet infinitely 

 varied rules. Of this peculiarity Crantz * has given an instance or two, 

 which, though extreme cases, serve to shew the kind of difficulty which 

 occurs in distinguishing the separate words of which such a sentence is com- 

 pounded. 



Several of our letters, taken according to the English mode of pronuncia- 

 tion, are not in use among these people. The letter c may at all times be 

 very well represened by k ; and /, j, q, v, x; and z never, I believe, occur at 

 all. Of about eight hundred words contained in the annexed Vocabulary, 

 I can find none beginning with the letters b, d, g, I, r, orwf. D occurs 

 very seldom in the middle of a word, and b still more rarely ; and in most 

 cases these letters immediately precede the liquids / or r. It is worthy of 

 remark, that the only exception to this that I have met with occurs in three 

 of the words used in the games already described, where the b is followed 

 by a vowel, as if, in the formation of these probably unmeaning words, as 

 well as in the mode of uttering them, something out of the common way 

 had been intended by the inventor. The letter f being quite unknown to 

 them, the first attempt at the word " fife" produced " pipe," and it was not 

 till after much practice that they could pronounce even one of the f's with 

 distinctness. 



I have remarked above that / is not used at the beginning of a word ; for 

 though it thus occurs in the conjunction loo, yet as this is invariably placed at 



* II. 224, 225. 



•f The words so spelt by Crantz are, according to die English pronunciation, more accu- 

 rately expressed by Oo, as in Oo-ang-a. Nearly the same remark applies to the v of the 

 Missionaries, for which, in English, iv must be substituted. 



