20 
crude picture-writing) we have no ancient documents with which to 
compare their present-day speech and arc less able to gauge the rates 
of change. That all languages do not change at the same rate we 
can see from the examples of Greek and English, since modern Greek 
differs less from the Greek spoken a thousand years ago than modern 
English from the Anglo-Saxon of 900 A.I). In America, Eskimo 
and Athapaskan seem more resistant to change than some of the 
other languages, e.g., Algonkian and Salishan; for in Algonkian and 
Salishan the dialects diverge rather widely from one another, whereas 
an Eskimo of the Alackenzie River delta can readily converse with 
a Labrador Eskimo, and a Chipewyan Indian of Great Slave lake 
with a Carrier of British Columbia, although their tribes have been 
separated for an untold number of centuries. Philologists, who must 
work with the languages as spoken to-day, have discovered no kin- 
ship among any of the eleven Canadian tongues, unless perhaps 
between Ilaida. Tlinkit, and Athapaskan, which Sapir would group 
together under tlie name of Nadene.^ lie has never published entirely 
satisfactory proof of their kinship, however, so that some other 
authorities still consider them separate languages, and attribute 
certain undoubted resemblances between them to mutual contact 
and borrowing rather than to common descent. One or two philolo- 
gists have also ventured the opinion that Eskimo and Algonkian 
may be related to one another, but liave put forward no evidence in 
support of their view.- In spite, then, of all the researches of the 
last half century, we are still unable to trace to a common source 
any two of the eleven languages current among our Canadian 
aborigines. 
Looking farther afield, we find that seven of the Canadian lan- 
guages, Athapaskan, Salishan, Wakashan, Kootenayan, Siouan, 
Irociuoian, and Algonkian, are spoken also in the United States; while 
Eskimo ranges from Greenland in the east to the Asiatic shore of 
Bering strait in the west. Certain writers, extending their view to 
the Old World, have claimed kinship between Eskimo and Finnish,’"^ 
and between Nadene (Athapaskan and related tongues) and the 
Sinitic (Tibeto-Cliinese-Siamese) group of eastern Asia, In no case, 
1 The Xa-Deiie T.aiiKuaKes, a preliminary reporl : Am, Anili,, vol. xvii, ]ip. 354 ff. 
2 Rapir even speculate.'! on an early " Algonkian-Wakashan ” root language from which have sprung 
■Algonkian, Benthuk (?). Wakashan, Ralish, ami Kootenay, .'^apir, E, : “Central anti Norlli AmencaTi 
Languages”; Encyolopt-dia Ttrilannica, I4th ed., vol. 5, p, 139, 
2 Sauvageot, A.: Esquimalt et Ouralien, Journal tie la Stteietc ties .Ainericanistes de Paris, N.S. tome 
xvi, pp. 279-316. 
