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Project Gutenberg's A Manual of the Malay language, by William Edward Maxwell

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Title: A Manual of the Malay language
       With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay

Author: William Edward Maxwell

Release Date: May 26, 2008 [EBook #25604]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MANUAL OF THE MALAY LANGUAGE ***




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This e-text includes characters that will only display in UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding:

ḳ, ḥ, ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ṃ, ṛ (letters with dot under: except ḳ and ḥ, these are used only in Sanskrit words)

ṅ (n with dot over, in Sanskrit words)

ă, ĕ, ŭ (vowel with breve or “short” sign: only ĕ is common)

ā (a with macron or “long” sign)

If any of these characters do not display properly—in particular, if the diacritic does not appear directly above the letter—or if the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that the browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browser’s default font.

In the section on Sanskrit origins, anusvara was printed as m̃ (m with tilde). It has been changed in this e-text to ṃ (m with dot under) for more reliable display. Note also that ś is written as ç, ṣ as sh, and ṛ as ṛi.

Footnote 53 of the Introduction refers to “the peculiar vowel sound represented in Arabic by the letter ain ... denoted by the Greek rough breathing”. The reference is to the glottal stop. It is represented in this e-text with a single opening quote ‘ because this will display more reliably than the printed text’s ‛ or ῾ (“Greek rough breathing”, equivalent to a “reversed high-nine” single quote).

A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are shown in the text with mouse-hover popups. Hyphenization is as in the original. Note that in modern written Malay, hyphens are generally not used except in duplications such as “siapa-siapa”.

Contents
(added by transcriber)

Preface

Introduction

Part I

Part II: Lessons I-XII

Part III: Lessons XIII-XXX

Part IV: Lessons XXXI-XL

Appendix to Part IV

Part V: Vocabulary

A
MANUAL OF THE MALAY LANGUAGE.
NEW WORKS ON MALAY LANGUAGE

HANDBOOK OF THE MALAY LANGUAGE, for the Use of Tourists and Residents. By Kelly and Walsh. Second Edition. 98 pages, 12mo, cloth. 1903. 3s. 6d. net. Printed in Roman characters only. It contains an elementary grammar and an English-Malay vocabulary.

SPREEKT GIJ MALEISCH? Words and phrases in Dutch, Malay, French, German, and English. By Jzn. Rijnenberg. Fourth Edition. 163 pages, oblong 8vo. 1901. 3s. 6d. net.

PRACTICAL MALAY GRAMMAR, with Reading and Translation Exercises. By W. G. Shellabear. 83 pages, 8vo, bound. 1899. 5s. net. All Malay words are printed in Roman characters only.

MALAY-ENGLISH VOCABULARY, containing 6500 Malay words and phrases. By W. G. Shellabear. 141 pages, 8vo, cloth. 1902. 6s. net. Printed in Roman characters only.

MALAY-ENGLISH DICTIONARY. By R. J. Wilkinson. 4to. 1901-3. Unbound, £2, 10s.; bound, £3, 3s. The Malay words are printed in Arabic and in Roman characters.

ENGLISH-MALAY VOCABULARY. By F. A. Swettenham. Fifth Edition. 245 and xxxii pages, 8vo, cloth. 1905. 8s. 6d. net.

MALAY-ENGLISH VOCABULARY. By F. A. Swettenham. New edition in preparation.

⁂ Malay words printed both in Arabic and Roman characters.

TRAVELLER’S MALAY PRONOUNCING HANDBOOK, for the Use of Travellers and Newcomers to Singapore. Seventh Edition. 317 and xxvi pages, 12mo, cloth. 1904. 5s.

Printed in Roman characters only.

London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co. Ltd.
Dryden House, Gerrard Street, W. A MANUAL OF THE MALAY LANGUAGE. WITH An Introductory Sketch of the
Sanskrit Element in Malay.

 

BY WILLIAM EDWARD MAXWELL, OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW;
ASSISTANT RESIDENT, PERAK, MALAY PENINSULA.

 

EIGHTH EDITION.

 

LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1907

Je n’en refuis aulcune de phrases qui s’usent emmy les rues;
ceux qui veulent combattre l’usage par la grammaire se mocquent.

Montaigne.

PREFACE.

The language which I have endeavoured to illustrate in the following pages is the Malay of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, some knowledge of which I have had the opportunity of acquiring during sixteen years’ service in Penang, Province Wellesley, Malacca, Singapore, and Perak.

Dialectical peculiarities are so abundant in Malay that it is impossible to teach the colloquial language of the people without imparting to the lesson the distinct marks of a particular locality. In parts of India it is said proverbially that in every twelve kos there is a variation in the language,1 and very much the same might be said of the Malay Peninsula and adjacent islands. The construction of the language and the general body of words remain, of course, the same, but in every state or subdivision of a state there are peculiar words and expressions and variations of accent and pronunciation which belong distinctively to it. Words common in one district sound strangely in another, or, it may be, they convey different meanings in the two places. Even words of such constant occurrence as the personal pronouns “I” and “you” vary according to locality. The Kedah accent is easily distinguished from that of Patani, and that again from the speech of Trengganu and Pahang. Certain expressions common in Penang are almost unintelligible in Malacca and Singapore, and vice versâ. In Perak it is not difficult to say whether a man comes from the upper or lower reaches of the river, by merely noting particular words in his conversation. Even individual villages and districts have their peculiar twang or their tricks of expression not found elsewhere. In Java, Sumatra, and other islands eastward in which Malay is spoken, the pronunciation and character of the language are much influenced by the other languages current there. Malay is only spoken in perfection in places where the natives speak no other tongue.

Native pedantry has endeavoured to classify various styles of speaking, as the court style (bahasa dalam), the well-bred style (bahasa bangsawan), the trader’s language (bahasa dagang), and the mixed language (bahasa kachau-kan), but all that can be correctly said is, that a limited number of words are used exclusively in intercourse with royal personages; that persons of good birth and education, in the Eastern Archipelago, as elsewhere, select their expressions more carefully than the lower classes; and that the vocabulary of commerce does not trouble itself with the graces of style and the copious use of Arabic words which commend themselves to native writers.

The written language is more stilted and less terse and idiomatic than the colloquial dialect; and even where pure Malay is employed, the influence of Arabic compositions is very marked. Whole sentences, sometimes, though clothed in excellent Malay, are unacknowledged translations of Arabic phrases. This may be verified by any one well acquainted with Malay literary compositions who will look into a really good translation of an Arabic work; for instance, Lane’s translation of the “Thousand and One Nights.” The Malay speaks much better than he writes, and has at his command quantities of words which never find their way into his literature, and, therefore, but rarely into dictionaries compiled by Europeans.

The spelling of Malay words in the native character is hardly yet fixed, though the Perso-Arabic alphabet has been in use since the thirteenth century; and those follow but a vain shadow who seek to prescribe exact modes of spelling words regarding which even native authorities are not agreed, and of which the pronunciation may vary according to locality. The experience of Crawfurd sufficiently proves this; there are words in his dictionary which are transliterated in as many as four different ways.

Two classes of works in his own language have hitherto been at the service of the English student of Malay—grammars, more or less scientifically arranged, and vocabularies and books of dialogues, which presuppose some knowledge of grammatical construction.

The Malay Grammar of Marsden is an admirable work, of unquestionable utility to the advanced student; but it contains more than the beginner wants to know. Crawfurd’s Malay Grammar, too, is hardly a work to put into the hands of a beginner.

Mere vocabularies, on the other hand, teach nothing but words and sentences, and throw no light upon forms of construction.

It has been my aim to supply a work which will be at once an elementary grammar and a compendium of words and sentences, which will teach the colloquial dialect and yet explain grammatical rules; and for this I have taken as my model the Hindustani Manual of the late Professor Forbes.

The language is not ennobled by having been the speech of men who have made their mark in the world’s history. The islands of Indonesia have never startled the Eastern world with an Akbar, or charmed it with a Hafiz or a Chand. Receptivity, not originality, is the characteristic of the Malay races. But the importance of Malay, when the traveller heads eastward from the Bay of Bengal, has been recognised by Europeans since the sixteenth century, when Magellan’s Malay interpreter was found to be understood from one end of the Archipelago to the other. It is the strong and growing language of an interesting people, and (in the words of a recent writer on Eastern languages) “for Malay, as for Hindustani, a magnificent future may be anticipated among the great speech-media of Asia and of the world. They manifest that capacity for the absorption and assimilation of foreign elements which we recognise as making English the greatest vernacular that the world has ever seen.”2

W. E. M.

The Residency, Larut, Perak,
July 1, 1881

1. Beames, Comparative Grammar of the Aryan Languages, p. 101.

2. Cust, Modern Languages of the East Indies, 150.

INTRODUCTION.

The interest of Englishmen in the Malay language began with the early ventures of the East India Company in the Far East, in the first years of the seventeenth century. It was the language of commerce everywhere east of the Bay of Bengal, and our earliest adventurers found it spoken at the trading ports which they visited. The Portuguese had preceded them by a century, and the Dutch had been a little earlier in the same field. Our countrymen seem to have been indebted to the latter for their first Malay vocabulary. The minutes of the East India Company record how, on the 22d January 1614, “a book of dialogues, heretofore translated into Latin by the Hollanders, and printed with the Malacca tongue, Mr. Hakluyt having now turned the Latin into English, and supposed very fit for the factors to learn, was ordered to be printed before the departure of the ships.”1

At present the use of Malay, as far as Englishmen are concerned, is chiefly confined to the officers of the Colonial Government in the British possessions in the Straits of Malacca and in the native states adjoining them, and to other residents in those parts, and in the Dutch settlements in the East. To these may be added the English communities of Labuan and Sarawak, and merchants, traders, and seamen all over the Eastern Archipelago. The limited extent of our Malay possessions, when they are compared with the magnificent islands which make up Netherlands India, excuse us, no

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