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4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 90
differ in the two versions are listed below, followed by an explanation
of each fact:^^
Ay. W.
Line 1. yu'a-.a'i (written twice) Line 1. yuV.a'i (written three times)
Line 2, 8. g'-^Dale-Gwo'Ii. Line 3, 9. g-'^Dali e-Gwo'M (2)
Line 4. dunu'-y'tam'le-.i^ Line 5. dunu'-y'tamle"' (3)
Line 12. n()-''dadu'-gta'Q-°sti' Line 12. nQ-^tadu'-kta'g-'-sti' (4)
Line 14. de'-du-dg-ne-li'se-sti' Line 14. de'-du'do-ne-lidi'se-sti' (5)
Line 14. g9-"tsa'd(o)tagi-ya' Line 14. gQ-"tsa'tagfya' (6)
Line 16. widistatl(i)tadinQtaniga Line 16. widistotl(a)tadi ... (7)
Line 20. atsflo"' Line 21. atsfla' (8)
(1) Whereas Ay. has written the song-word twice, W. writes it
three times; neither of them is right, since, strictly speaking, it should
be written seven times; but it is very rare that this is done; often we
even find these song-words written only once, since every medicine
man knows that they are to be repeated four or seven times anyhow.
(2) It is customary for the Cherokee who write a great deal in
the Sequoya syllabaiy to adhere to a "sandhi"-law of the spoken
language, and to drop a final vowel before a word beginning with a
vowel, linking the consonant of the first word with the vowel of the
second as in this case: (9'Da) li4-€*(gwo)>-le"-
It will be noticed that Ay. conforms to this use in every one of the
three cases where the word occurs (Ay. Unes 2, 8, 16), whereas W.
does it only in the last case (W. line 16). This discrepancy is to be
explained by the fact that I read out the text in slow tempo, and by
so doing no "sandhi" phenomenon was heard by my informant.
(3) In the written as well as in the spoken language the -i, at the
end of the -le*i, -ne-i, -se-i and similar tense-suffixes is written and
pronounced when the sentence is considered as finished; if more
words follow in the sentence, however, it is generally dropped. It
is a mere matter of eiiphony, to which W. has in this case not con-
formed, probably because I may have led him to believe by the
intonation of my voice that the sentence was not finished.
(4) In the Cherokee syllabary the system of the surd and sonant
velars and dentals is very imperfectly worked out. As a result, the
Cherokee themselves are quite inconsistent in using the symbols for
g, k and d, t. The matter is made more complicated by the actual
existence of the so-called "intermediates" in their phonetics. This
discrepancy is an illustration of this state of affairs.
(5) Ay. omitted the symbol for the -di- syllable here, without
which the word has no meaning. W. consequently interpolated it.
(6) Although such phonetic phenomena as breath, stops, etc., are
quite frequent in Cherokee linguistics, the syllabary very imper-
1' The figures in parentheses following the words as written by W. refer to the
explanations in the following paragraphs.
(1)