Language and Folklore (Supplement). 997 
Here the phonograph would often fail us. However, a more im- 
portant point, — our total result, the full exposition of the poetical 
world and language of the inhabitants of Ammassalik, and the critical 
commentary of the texts would not have been attained with the help 
of the phonograph alone.’ For this, as I have tested and experienced, 
it was necessary to make a study of the living dialect on its own 
home grounds, and a systematic personal recording of this literature, 
which though until that time only extant by word of mouth, was yet 
all the more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The phonograph 
is an instrument without soul or heart. A listening ear is the only 
direct way to an understanding spirit. 
6. 
I consider the language in my text notes to represent an un- 
influenced dialect whose marked characteristics, as compared with 
the dialects of the west coast, are evident. Only perhaps by exception 
have one or two single linguistic modernisms crept in, a West Green- 
land form of expression, or some word stem, under contact with our 
colonisation’s first visitors from the other coast, where а literary 
language has developed long ago on the basis of the SW Greenland 
dialect around the small metropolis of Godthab. 
HANSERAK, who was the first to give us samples of the East 
Greenlandic, joined forces with the interpreter of the “Konebaad’s 
Expedition” in dressing East Greenland words in West Greenland 
garb. This method of procedure characterised the entire linguistic 
side of the results of this expedition, — among other matters, nearly 
all the Eskimo names of places and persons in the older work.” 
Even the chief of the expedition Gustav Hox in his book made 
certain reservations in regard to the way in which his collaborators 
spelled the East Greenland names — for instance their Angmagssalik 
which he transcribed to Amasalik “in order to represent the East 
Greenland pronunciation” (First Part page 4). In speaking of the 
1 When, a couple of years ago, I arranged the texts that they might serve for 
the grouping | of the melodies, (cf. here p. 58), it was impossible to avoid some 
of the numbers being uncertain, so that the melodies were placed in a wrong 
group. Now I am able to make the following corrections : 
Mel. nos. 29, 34 and 40 are not children's songs, “but drum-contest songs 
which have passed over to a form of evening entertainment, and were sung in 
the house to pass away the time. — No. 59 belongs with 58 as two variants, 
just so, 60 belongs with 57 (but not with 58). — „No. 116 is a children’s song 
and should _be placed in the first group (nos. 1—40). 
2 In “First Part” (pp. 350—351) I have placed a list of such names of places 
beside the phonetical forms noted by myself. The difference between these and 
the compromise forms of the former is apparent. 
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