Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/247

 APPENDIX. (No. I.) GRAMMATICAL NOTICES. ESKIMAUX. [Extracted from the " Mithridates " and from Crantz.] The Eskimaux have a distinct word for every thing, or ac- tion, if it requires the least distinction. Thus they designate with a peculiar name animals of the same species, according to their age, sex, and form ; and what we call, in general, " to fish," has a distinct name for every species offish. (Que- ry, whether it is not for every distinct mode of fishing.) Their words are varied and declined with multiplied different modifications, and are attended with numerous aj/ixa and suf- fixa ; and they join many words together, so as to render the language concise and significant, but extremely difficult for a foreigner to acquire. They want many of our letters, never use many consonants together at the beginning of a syllable, have a deep guttural r and some diphthongs difficult to pronounce. They often alter letters for the sake of euphony. The substantives and verbs have three numbers, singular, dual, and plural, but no gender ; the plural ends in t, and the dual in k. The genitive is expressed by the termination b, or m, the other cases by prepositions, of which there are only five, mik, ' with, 5 ' through ' ; mit, ' from ' ; mut, l to' ; rne, ' in/ 1 upon ' ; kut, or agut, ' through,' ' around ' ; and these are placed at the end of the nouns, changing the m into n in duals, plurals, and pronouns. The nouns may be much varied by additional terminations, of a diminutive (rsoak), augmenta- tive (nguoak), odious (piluk) } or agreeable signification ; and