with. The distinction between hard and soft (or surd and sonant) mutes
is not preserved. The sounds of _d_ and _t_, and those of
_k_ and _g_, are interchangeable. So also are those of _l_
and _r_, the former sound being heard more frequently in the Oneida
dialect and the latter in the Canienga. From the Western dialects,--the
Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca,--this _l_ or _r_ sound has, in
modern times, disappeared altogether. The Canienga _konoronkwa_, I
esteem him (in Oneida usually sounded _konolonkwa_), has become
_konoenkwa_ in Onondaga,--and in Cayuga and Seneca is contracted to
_kononkwa_. Aspirates and aspirated gutturals abound, and have
been variously represented by _h, hh, kh_, and _gh_, and
sometimes (in the works of the early French missionaries) by the Greek
[Greek: chi] and the _spiritus asper_. Yet no permanent distinction
appears to be maintained among the sounds thus represented, and M. Cuoq
reduces them all to the simple _h_. The French nasal sound
abounds. M. Cuoq and the earlier English missionaries have expressed it,
as in French, simply by the _n_ when terminating a syllable. When
it does not close a syllable, a diaeresis above the n, or else the
Spanish _tilde (n)_ indicates the sound. Mr. Wright denotes it by a
line under the vowel. The later English missionaries express it by a
diphthong: _ken_ becomes _kea; nonwa_ becomes _noewa_;
_onghwentsya_ is written _oughweatsya_.

A strict analysis would probably reduce the sounds of the Canienga
language to seven consonants, _h, k, n, r, s, t,_ and _w_, and
four vowels, _a, e, i_, and _o_, of which three, _a, e, and
o_, may receive a nasal sound. This nasalizing makes them, in fact,
distinct elements; and the primary sounds of the language may therefore
be reckoned at fourteen. [Footnote: A dental _t_, which the French
missionaries represent sometimes by the Greek _theta_ and sometimes