The dialect studied by Campanius and Penn, and that in southern New Jersey presented the r sound where the Upper Unami and Minsi had the l. Thus Campanius gives rhenus, for lenno, man; and Penn oret, for the Unami wulit, good.
The dialectic substitution of one of these elements for another is a widespread characteristic of Algonkin phonology. Roger Williams early called attention to it among the tribes of New England.[159]
Tracing it to its origin, it clearly arises from the use of "alternating consonants," so extensive in American languages. In very many of them it is optional with the speaker to employ any one of several sounds of the same class. This is the case with these letters in Cree, which, for various reasons, may be considered the most archaic of all the Algonkin dialects. In its phonetics, the th, y, l, n and r are "permuting" or "alternating" letters.[160]
Often, too, the sound falls between these letters, so that the foreign ear is left in doubt which to write.
That this is the case with the Delaware is evident from some of the more recent vocabularies where the r is not infrequent. The following words, from the vocabulary in Major Denny's Memoir, illustrate this:—
| Stone | seegriana |
| Buffalo | serelea |
| Beaver | thomagru |
| Above | hoqrunog, etc. |
Even Mr. Lewis A. Morgan, who had considerable practice in writing the sounds of the Indian languages, inserts the r in a number of pure Delaware words he collected in Kansas.[161]
Another difficulty presents itself in the sibilants. They are not always distinguished.
Mr. Horatio Hale writes me on this point: "In Minsi, and perhaps in all the Lenape dialects, the sound written s is intermediate between s and th (the Greek Θ). This element is pronounced by placing the tongue and teeth in the position of the theta, and then endeavoring to utter s".
The guttural, represented in the Moravian vocabularies by ch, was softened by the English likewise to the s sound, as it appears also to have been by the New Jersey tribes.[162]