The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

—APPEXDIX. 463Having before had experience of the difficulty of satisfactorilydetermining any words but nouns and a few of the commonestadjectives, where the people are complete savages and tliclanguage of communication but imperfectly known, I selectedabout a hundred and twenty words, and have adhered to themthroughout as far as practicable. After the English, I givethe Malay word for comi^arison with the other languages. Inorthography I adopt generally the continental mode of soundingthe vowels, with a few modifications, thus :English .... a e i or ie ei o u uSounded .. . . ali a ee i o e o;- eli ooThese sounds come out most prominently at the end of a syllable ;when followed by a consonant the sounds are very little differentfrom the usual pronunciation. Thus, "Ai^i" is pronouncedApi)ee, while " Minta " is pronounced Mintah. The short u ispronounced like er in English, but without any trace of theguttural. Long, short, and accented syllables are marked inthe usual way. The languages ai'e grouped geograjDhicallyjpassing from west to east ; those from the same or adjacentislands being as much as possible kept together.I profess to be able to draw very few conclusions from thesevocabularies. I believe that the languages have been so muchmodified by long intercommunication among the islands, thatresemblances of words are no proof of afiinity of the peoplewho use those words. Many of the wide-spread similaritiescan be traced to organic onomatopa^ia. Such are the prevalenceof fj (hard), ng, ni, in words meaning " tooth " j of I andTOin those for "tongue"; of nge, ung, sno, in those for "nose."Others are plainly commercial words, as " salaka " and " ringgit "'(the Malay word for dollar) for silver, and " mas " for gold.The Papuan group of languages appear to be distinguished byharsher combinations of letters, and by monosyllabic wordsending in a consonant, which are rarely or never found in theMalay group. Some of the tribes who are decidedly of Malay