Five Hundred Eskimo Words

Front matter

Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–24 THE DANISH EXPEDITION TO ARCTIC NORTH AMERICA IN CHARGE OF KNUD RASMUSSEN, PH. D. VOL. III. NO. 3.

FIVE HUNDRED ESKIMO WORDS

A COMPARATIVE VOCABULARY FROM GREENLAND AND CENTRAL ESKIMO DIALECTS

Introduction

THE Fifth Thule Expedition, which in the years 1921–24, under the leadership of Knud Rasmussen, visited Arctic America, had as its main object the study of the Eskimos from a folkloristic, an archæological, an ethnographical and, partly, also an anthropographic point of view, whereas the study of their language was, at first, not included in the program of the expedition. There was no one who had received any special linguistic training among the members of the scientific staff. In practice this did not put obstacles' in the way of our work. Knud Rasmussen who from his infancy has been quite familiar with the Greenlanders' language and manner of thinking, was able to understand the dialects round Hudson Bay with the greatest ease; neither had the rest of us — in spite of our infinitely smaller knowledge of Greenlandic — any difficulty in our daily intercourse with the Canadian Eskimos, and as to more accurate investigations we received excellent assistance from the intelligent interpreter of the Expedition, the West-Greenlander Jacob Olsen.

We soon realized, however, that even though the linguistic work which we were able to do could never equal that of an expert, it would not be entirely without value when considering the extremely slight material otherwise available from the Central Eskimos. After having consulted with Knud Rasmussen, the present author determined to make an attempt at compiling a list of words from the chief dialects within our principal field of operation, and supplying it with comparative lists from West Greenland and the Thule District at Smith Sound. The assistance which I received from Knud Rasmussen throughout was an essential condition for carrying out the task appointed, and for this valuable assistance it is a pleasure as well as a duty to express my heartfelt thanks. Another faithful collaborator to whom I am greatly indebted is the above- mentioned Jacob Olsen. To the late Professor Vilh. Thomsen I owe a special debt of gratitude for going over my manuscript and making a number of valuable comments; at the same time I must add that I am, of course, personally responsible for possible errors.

I realized from the start that in my linguistic studies chief importance should be attached to the phonetical side of the question, as my other tasks on the expedition and, not least, my limited knowledge of the Eskimo language made it impossible to compile a vocabulary of any considerable length. On the other hand, I thought that even a short list would be able to bring out rather clearly the most important peculiarities. A phonetician would naturally arrange his list with a view to his particular object. Unfortunately, I was not able to do this, because, if for no other reasons, the otherwise amble library of the expedition did not contain the necessary literature, linguistic investigations, as mentioned above, not being included in our tasks. I then determined to choose the words according to another principle. In his pioneering works Rink has shown to what extent ethnography may profit by the results of philology. When choosing by preference the names of such natural conditions and cultural elements as are closely connected with the Arctic existence of the Eskimos, I might hope to contribute towards elucidating the Eskimo culture from a linguistic point of view.

The chapter on pronunciation contains a more detailed account of the phonetic symbols used. Here attention will only be directed to the fact that wherever these symbols are used for rendering words in the text, they are placed within brackets. All other Eskimo words, and only those, are printed in italics. In such cases where it has been possible with certainty to transcribe the different spelling to the system followed here, a transcription has been undertaken; otherwise I have retained the orthography of the author in question.

The chapter on the Eskimo dialects partly supplies a few historical and geographical facts, partly a few remarks on their phonetic aspect. However, these remarks by no means make any pretence to completeness, as the present work is rather to be regarded as a presentation of the material collected.

In the various sections of the list the words are alphabetically arranged, except in such cases where this proceeding proved unpractical (relationship, pronouns, numerals). Whereas I do not think that the first sections of the list require further explanatory remarks, it will, I suppose, be necessary to say a few words about the verbs. The transitive verbs are naturally quoted with a suffix and, as is natural and common, in the third person singular. Of the intransitive verbs some are, as far as the Central Eskimo dialects are concerned, quoted in the indicative, others in the noun participle. Perhaps under the influence of the teaching of grammar in the schools, in West Greenland a rather sharp distinction is made nowadays between these two forms, for instance he comes (indicative), one who comes, I hear that he has come (participle). This does not apply in quite the same degree to the Central Eskimos who use the participle in many cases where the "correct" West Greenland usage requires the indicative, this being due to the slight difference between the Eskimo noun and verb. In the list of words I have therefore made no attempt at normalizing the forms, but have used the one which I have heard in each individual case.

A number of notes are added to the list, partly relating to positive facts, and partly to linguistic matters. Without pretending to completeness I have attempted to explain deviating terms for the same idea from the meaning of the verbal stems. It is only natural that these notes should be based upon the West Greenland dialects, which are better known than any other. In exceptional cases where they have proved insufficient, other dialects have also been taken into consideration (Labrador, the Mackenzie Delta, North and South Alaska).

Pronunciation

The system of symbols adopted in the compilation of the present list is very nearly the same as the one used by Thalbitzer in his works on Greenland phonetics, and thus also very nearly like the one employed by "l'Association phonétique internationale" . As, however, I cannot claim to be regarded as anything but a layman in linguistics, I have, in certain particulars, simplified his alphabet, so as not to impart to my notes a higher degree of accuracy than I can venture to substantiate. On the other hand, it has proved necessary to introduce a few new symbols of sounds, which are unfamiliar to the Greenland Eskimo language. Everything considered, the Greenland and the Central Eskimo dialects are, however, extremely closely related, also from a phonetic point of view.

The modified system presents the following appearance:

Consonants | Closed | Fricative | Nasal | Semi- vowels

voiceless | voiced | voiceless | voiced

| Bilabial | |

| Dental | | | | | | | | | |

| Palatal | | | | | | | —

| Uvular | — | | | —

| Lateral | — | — | — | —

| Glottal | — | — | — | — | —

Vowels | Open | Semi- open | Semi-closed | Closed

| not rounded | rounded | | not rounded | rounded

Normal | | | |

Uvularized | — | | | | | —

Nasalized | — | | | | | —

An exponent after one of the common symbols denotes a faint glide towards the sound of the exponent or a very faintly articulated and, therefore, hardly audible sound, for instance .

As regards the pronunciation the following particulars must also be given, the reader being at the same time requested to bear in mind that the comparisons with the sounds of known, European languages can naturally only be approximate, although the Eskimo sounds in many cases are very close to the European ones.

| : | as in French "aller"; au and ai are always diphthongs, as in English "how", "high". In modern West Greenlandic a complete assimilation of the u and i sounds has frequently taken place, a long a being the result. In the other dialects the diphthongs, on the other hand, are common. In the Thule District and at Kazan River au an ai sometimes approach öu and äi.

| : | the uvularized sound corresponding with a, as in English "far".

| : | nasalized ᴀ; occurs only before r, combined with a nasal consonant.

| : | most frequently as in English "hat"; at times somewhat more closed, as in French "lait".

| : | a sound which does not occur in modern West Greenlandic. I think I have heard it in some cases as a true, voiced sound (media), perhaps as in English, hardly as marked as in French. Most frequently, however, b seems half-voiced as the Danish b, but it is always a sound which is clearly distinct from p.

| : | labialized sound between b and v; principally occurs before v and not in modern West Greenlandic.

| : | at first I had not used this sign in my notes. In the cases where the sound combination occurs in West Greenlandic I had, for the dialects of Simpson Peninsula and Kazan River, or , in some cases even . However, it seemed to me that the sound was in reality more uniform than indicated by these symbols. Since then I have read Thalbitzer's description of the phonetics of the East Greenland dialects, which had not been published at that time. Here mention is made of a sound, expressed by the sign c — "c (unvoiced, mouillé) is a mingling of a palatal t and s, at the same time post-dental and prepalatal." I have now no doubt that it is this sound I have heard, and therefore I have not hesitated to introduce the symbol c for the dialects mentioned above. Melville Peninsula, however, seems to have an actual tˢ as in West Greenland. As to the Thule District I have retained the writing tˢ, although the s is frequently almost inaudible, and the sound strongly approaches the northern West Greenland t.

| ɔ: | see after o.

| d: | half-voiced, more rarely voiced sound; unknown in modern West Greenlandic. Cf. above under b.

| e: | as in French "été".

| ᴇ: | "uvalarized" sound, corresponding to e, viz. an e which, under the influence of a succeeding uvular sound, is articulated farther back in the mouth than e pure.

| ᴇ̃: | nasalized ᴇ; occurs in similar combinations as ᴀ̃.

| f: | bilabial sound, very different from the English and French labiodental f. Only in West Greenland is the labiodental f gaining ground probably owing to Danish influence.

| g: | as in English "begin", French "gant". This sound, which does not occur in modern West Greenlandic, is far more rarely half-voiced than b and d.

| ǥ: | a voiced, "open" g, corresponding to the unvoiced x, as in (North) German "regen", Danish "age", Russian "когда".

| g: | palatalized g; unknown in modern West Greenlandic.

| h: | only in a minority of cases — apart from the Kazan River dialect — the simple expiration as in English and Danish. As a rule it is pronounced with the posterior or middle part of the tongue slightly raised, thus becoming an intermediate sound between (English) h and x, or between (English) h and ʃ. It is one of the most difficult sounds to define, and in many cases — still apart from Kazan River — it seems to depend upon individual inclination whether h, x or ʃ prevail. This is particularly marked in the Thule District where the h-sound is now slowly beginning to disappear under the influence of immigrators from West Greenland. Here h is practically unknown.

| i: | as in French "ici".

| ɪ: | "uvularized" i (cf. ᴇ), suggesting the Russian ы; in all probability not occurring in West Greenland.

| ɪ̃: | nasalized ɪ: occurs in the same combinations as ᴀ̃ and ᴇ̃.

| j: | as English y in "yard", German and Danish j. In the Central dialects there is sometimes an approach to ʒ.

| k: | as French c in "cas"; especially in front of a, o and ɔ very faintly aspirated and thus different from the corresponding Germanic sound.

| l: | as in French "aller", but very different from the "hollow" English l in "always" and from the Russian л. Sometimes it seems to be preceded by a very faint d-sound.

| ʟ: | unvoiced l.

| m: | as in English "man".

| n: | as in English "no".

| ɳ: | as ng in English "song".

| o: | as French "eau".

| ɔ: | the uvularized sound; corresponding to o.

| ɔ̃: | nasalized ɔ; occurs in the same combinations as ᴀ̃, ᴇ̃ and ɪ̃.

| p: | as French p; aspiration as in the case of k.

| q: | uvular k, in the standard Greenlandic orthography indicated by the sign ᴋ.

| q̃: | the nasalized consonant corresponding to q; rare in West Greenland, but extremely common on Melville Peninsula.

| r: | a uvular, untrilled r as in Danish and North German, but very different both from the English point r, and the Parisian trilled (rolled) r. In the Thule District the intervocalic r may be to some extent labialized, so as almost to approach w; this also appears from the — for that matter very unreliable — rendering of Polar Eskimo words by English-speaking authors.

| ʀ: | voiceless r, almost as ch in German "ach", Scotch "loch".

| r̃: | nasalized r; only occurs between a vowel and m, n or ɳ.

| s: | voiceless point s, as in English "sing". Parry writes: "The letters r and s are never pronounced as with us, but in a thick, guttural manner, the former approximating to the Northumbrian dialect, and the latter to the Scotch ch (as in the word: loch)". The latter comparaison is hardly correct, but may suggest a sound somewhat like ʃ. Parry's list of words is from Aivilik and Iglulik. In the former district both s and ʃ occur, in the latter now hardly any other voiceless sound than s (judging from the quite few Iglulik Eskimos I must own I have heard), but on the other hand the voiced z. Should Parry's statements then be taken as evidence of a modified pronunciation?

| ʃ: | a voiceless palatalized sound the formation of which Thalbitzer describes in the following manner: "The point of the tongue rests passive against the back of the lower teeth, and the middle (and back?) of the tongue is somewhat raised. The groove stretches over a large portion of the surface of the front of the tongue". The sound in all probability is somewhat reminiscent of the Russian palatalized c, for instance in "сеыя". It is, at any rate, rather different from English sh, with which it is sometimes compared. On the other hand, it may now and then rather approach L. In West Greenland a faint i-sound sometimes seems to be heard before ʃ, that is 'ʃ. However the ʃ-sound is on the point of disappearing in favour of s, in the same manner as bilabial f is disappearing in favour of labiodental f. In this list s has been employed everywhere as far as West Greenland is concerned, although my informant frequently used ʃ in connected speech.

| t: | dental as in French "été"; faintly aspirated in the same cases as k and p. A characteristic and common combination of sounds is tˢ (cf. the above under c). In this, as in the Russian ц, the two elements are closely joined and together take no longer than a single consonant.

| u: | as in German and Danish u, French ou.

| v: | bilabial v, as Spanish b in "Habana"; like the bilabial f in West Greenland on the point of disappearing in favour of the labio-dental v.

| w: | at Kazan River as English w, otherwise slightly less rounded.

| x: | the voiceless sound, corresponding to g; as German ch in "ich" or Russian palatalized x.

| z: | semi-voiced, more rarely voiced, palatalized sound, corresponding to ʃ; very different from English z in zeal, rather as Russian palatalized з.

| ʒ: | the same sound as z, but with what the Germans call "Rauschlaut". It sounds almost between Danish j (English y) and French j, though it more nearly approaches the former. After g it is sometimes so faintly pronounced that it is almost on the point of coalescing into one sound, a long palatalized ç.

| ': | glottal stop, quite as in Danish "Kam", "gul". At Kazan River and, slightly less marked, in Committee Bay it is a common and characteristic phonetic component of the language.

The length of a sound is expressed by · after the sign in question, for instance a·, k·; in the Eskimo language the quantity of the sounds plays a far greater part than in most Indo-European languages. Thalbitzer's remark "a long vowel or consonant in English, French etc. is of a shorter duration than the corresponding sound in Greenlandic" also applies to the Central Eskimo dialects. In these we may also meet the same four combinations of long and short sounds. It is most difficult to determine the length of the voiceless fricatives, because they are always, even when short, of somewhat longer duration than the other short consonants. Therefore, in the list errors in writing down these sounds may have been committed.

As contrasted with the length of sounds the stress is of less importance than in English and other Germanic languages, and therefore it has only been indicated in the list in exceptional cases, viz. by ˡ before the sound in question, for instance ˡa. The remarks made by Thalbitzer may be quoted as a main rule: "The dynamic accent in a great many words is uncertain or only slightly differentiated … There is always a marked stress on the vowel before a long (geminated) consonant, or on a long vowel … Besides, the final syllable has a tendency to attract the stress to itself".

The movement of speech is, as a rule, rather slow. The musical accent varies greatly from one dialect to another.

The Indo-European languages are so well known from a phonetic point of view that it would be presumptuous on my part to' undertake a comparison between their sound systems and those of the Eskimo language. Besides the two linguistic stocks in question have had such a slight connection with each other outside Greenland — where a certain influence, as mentioned above, really can be traced — that a comparison would hardly offer many points of interest at the present stage of the linguistic study. This is presumably different in the case of the adjoining Indian languages, which, for one thing, are less known phonetically, and which have had an opportunity of influencing the language of the Eskimos for untold centuries.

On Newfoundland the Eskimos met the now extinct Beothuk, in Southern Alaska they now live beside the Tlingit, and in Siberia the Chukchi are their immediate neighbours. The only two linguistic groups which are, to any great extent, conterminous with the Eskimos are, however, the Algonkians towards the east and the Athapascans towards the west.

In Labrador the Eskimos border on the Algonkian tribes Montagnais, Naskapi and Cree, and even though the latter tribe is now, to the west of Hudson Bay, cut off from the Eskimos by the Athapascan Chipewyans (Caribou Eaters), before the penetration of the latter from the Mackenzie region there has been a connection between Eskimos and Cree. The only Algonkian language I have heard is the Cree. Unfortunately I have no notes about it, but I think that I may venture to maintain that its sound system with its very easy — also for us Europeans — and, as it seem, comparatively few sounds is widely different from the Eskimo.

The one of the two Indian stocks with which the Eskimos west of Hudson Bay are in direct contact is the Athapascan. As far as the Western Eskimos are concerned it is a question of the Kutchin, Khotana and Ahtena tribes, whereas for the Central Eskimos it is the Chipewyans and the closely related tribes Yellow Knives (Tatsanotinne) and Dog-Ribs (Thlingchadinne). At Churchill I have frequently had the opportunity of hearing the Chipewyan (Caribou Eaters') dialect, and I have made a number of notes regarding it, upon which the following remarks are based.

In comparison with the Eskimo consonants the Chipewyans, in the first place, lack some bilabial sounds, viz. p, f and v. On the other hand, they have two interdental sounds, a voiceless as in English "think", and a voiced as in English "that", the former especially being one of the most common sounds. The very characteristic palatalized Eskimo consonants are entirely unknown to the Chipewyans, who in addition to the common dental s have the corresponding voiced sound, and further a consonant like the English sh, which is sometimes voiced like French j; finally, besides the common dental t, they have a very strongly aspirated dental t, a palatal (?) t and the corresponding strongly aspirated sound, a common k and a strongly aspirated k. The Chipewyans, on the other hand, lack the characteristic uvular sounds q and q̃ .

If we turn to the vowels, we shall find that with the Chipewyans the list is extended by a sound as in English "law", another as in French "seul", an unstressed vowel as in the first syllable of English "to-day" and, finally, a far more extensive use of the vowel in French "lait" than is found in the Eskimo language, whereas the one resembling it, viz. that in English "hat", presumably does not occur. On the other hand, we naturally lack all the Eskimo uvularized vowels. Among the Chipewyans, the nasal vowels play a similar part to the one played by the uvularized vowels among the Eskimos, all Chipewyans vowels being frequently nasalized with the exception of u (?) and ǝ.

Of more "characteristic" sounds only x, g, ʀ, r and L are in reality common to both lauguages. A glottal stop is mentioned by Goddard as occuring with the Chipewyans at Cold Lake. I am fairly certain that anything resembling the Danish glottal stop does not occur in the Churchill dialect, except perhaps initially (spiritus lenis), as I could hardly have failed to catch such a characteristic and homelike sound.

The peculiar and, to our ears, by no means beautiful character of the language of the Chipewyans is due to the nasal vowels, the interdental fricatives, and the strongly aspirated tenues, in the same manner as the Eskimo language is distinguished by the uvular, and partly also by the palatalized consonants and uvularized vowels. Generally speaking the phonetics of the two languages must be said to be so far removed from each other that any larger mutual influence is outside the bounds of probability.

As to the possibility that the unvoiced l [ʟ] has been adopted into the Eskimo language from foreign sources, see p. 32.

The Dialects

There is a possibility that the four words which are preserved, through the saga of Erik the Red, from the “Skrælings” on Markland are of Eskimo origin. If so, this is the oldest known specimen of the Eskimo language, or more acurately defined, the dialect on the Atlantic coast of Labrador. It was, however, not until the north-west expeditions of the Renaissance period that indubitable Eskimo words were written down, there being a short list of seventeen words dating from Frobisher's visit to Baffin Land in 1576. Ten years later, the first actual list of words was compiled, being of double the length as the one mentioned above, from West Greenland, and it was Davis, who in this modest way laid the foundation of the later thorough study of the language of Greenland. Thus Europe obtained, at a very early period, a superficial knowledge at any rate of two of the branches into which the East Eskimo dialects are divided, viz. the Greenland and the Central branch. As mentioned above, the very oldest information possibly dates from the third and last, the Labrador branch.

This geographical division into a Greenlandic, a Central and a Labrador branch of dialects, is practical, but probably of no great linguistic value. For irrespective of these branches the dialects form groups, the mutual relation of which only in part corresponds with the geographical division. The West Greenland group is rather close to the Iglulik group, which belongs to the Central branch, the latter in its turn being very close to the Labrador group. On the other hand, the difference, for instance between the Pâdlimiut and the Iglulik dialects, is far greater than between the Iglulik and the Labrador dialects.

One thing must be borne in mind which, however, will fully appear from the list, viz. that even between the dialects mutually most removed the differences are only small. It is true that they are somewhat greater than between English and American-English or between Danish and Norwegian "riksmål", but they are less than between Danish and Swedish. The difference between the individual groups may, perhaps, be compared with the difference between standard English and Scotch, and between standard Danish and Jutlandic. A similar amount of practice to that which is needed by an Englishman in order to read Robert Burns, or by a Dane in order to enjoy Blicher, is all a Greenlander requires in order to understand the central dialects. Neither Jacob Olsen, a native of West Greenland, nor our Polar Eskimos had spent many days among the Canadian Eskimos, before they were able to talk freely with them upon all everyday subjects.

Within the confines of Greenland there are three groups of dialects which belong, respectively, to the east coast, the west coast south of Melville Bay, and the Thule or Cape York District at Smith Sound.

The most easterly of these — in fact the most easterly of all the Eskimo groups — only comprises the southern part of the east coast of Greenland, from Blosseville Coast to Cape Farewell. It is true that as late as at the beginning of the 19th century the Eskimo language was spoken much farther north, viz. on Clavering Island, between lat. 74–75° N, where in 1823 Clavering met a family of twelve members, including women and children. However, the inhabitants of the north-east coast were entirely extinct, before the next expedition visited these remote parts, and nothing whatsoever is known of their language. Thalbitzer defines the distribution of the three southern dialects in the following manner:

Lat. 68°–64° N. | Kialineq (Kialêq)-Pikiutdleq (Pikîteq): the Angmagssalik District.

Lat. 64°–62° N. | Umîvik-Ikermiut (Ikermîn) | Frederik VI Coast.

Lat. 62°–60° N. | Anoritôq (Anoritêq)—Aluk (Alik)

The only vocabulary to hand from the east coast was for a long time the brief list, published by Rink, and based upon the notes made by the Holm Expedition. Since then the Angmagssalik dialect has been subjected to exhaustive studies by Thalbitzer, whose results, however, have only been published in parts. In 1923 it was spoken by 709 individuals. From Frederik VI Coast very little is known apart from a list of words and a text published by the Rev. Poul Vibæk, and as the inhabitants of the whole of this region have gradually immigrated to the southern west coast in the course of the 19th century, their linguistic peculiarities have probably now entirely, or almost entirely, disappeared. As the East Greenlands dialects are not included in the present work, no particulars regarding them will be given. —

On the whole of the long west coast which, irrespective of the indentations, corresponds with the distances between Copenhagen and Naples or from Niagara halfway into Florida, four principal dialects are spoken, which, however, are very closely related. Even the oldest vocabulary from these parts, viz. the above-mentioned work of Davis, brings out a point of considerable interest. Davis translates "a fogge" by tucktodo, whereas "fog" in West Greenland is now called . At the present time it is not till Iglulik that the word is again met with — at Kazan River — with the same meaning. The word is derived from , darkness.

Whereas Davis' list was written down in far too inadequate a manner to be of value from a phonetic point of view, this, in spite of all deficiencies, does not apply to the two succeding compilations, viz. those made by Olearius and Caspar Bartholin, both of them originating from the Greenlanders who in 1654 were carried from Godthaab Fjord to Denmark by the Danell Expedition. These lists and, in a much higher degree, the later, far more complete dictionaries compiled by Poul Egede and Fabricius fully show that the pronunciation in West Greenland has altered on certain points during the last centuries. The interesting feature is that the old forms show a far greater resemblence to the Central Eskimo pronunciation than do those of the present day. In modern West Greenlandic an assimilation has taken place in the first sounds within certain consonant groups, whereas in former times they were evidently pronounced separately, as is still the case in the Thule District and within the Central Eskimo area. Instead of the modern forms , large beard, , those (who) laugh, , caribou, Olearius and Bartholin give the forms umixuin, iglakton, tucto, which clearly indicate the pronunciation of the consonants. Even a comparatively modern author like Fabricius writes the words in a manner which points in the same direction, for instance, túkto. The writing of a mute g (corresponding to the k and c of older authors) has been retained in the Greenlandic orthography. There is evidently some connection between the assimilation of the initial consonant and the change from voiced to voiceless which seems to have taken place in these cases, as for instance ublau, day, now ; ibling, thou, now ; ipgin, straw, now . Fabricius has these words as údlok (but kablunâk, a European) iblit or ivlit, as well as igvit.