8 h POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it also lias the advantage of being a nappy one. And where content- 

 ment dwells, where honesty prevails, where the home is a stronghold, 

 there are culture and civilization, even though they may not coincide 

 with our own. 



The Malays are not barbarians, and their language by its grace 

 and adaptability has shown its right to be. To-day it is the mother 

 tongue of more than forty millions of people, and the lingua franca 

 of Chinamen, Hindus, European, and natives. It is spoken from 

 Madagascar to the distant islands of the Pacific, and from the Philip- 

 pines to Australia. With it one can barter in Celebes and sell in 

 Java; converse with a sultan in Sumatra or a Spaniard in Manila. 

 Moreover, it is soft and melodious, rich in expression, poetical in 

 idiom, and simple in structure — a language almost without grammar 

 and yet of immense vocabulary, with subtle distinctions and fine 

 gradations of thought and meaning; a language that sounds in one's 

 ears long after Tanah Malay u and the coral islands and the jungle 

 strand have sunk into hazy recollection, just as they once dropped out 

 of sight behind one's departing ship. 



Malay is written in the Arabic character, which was adopted with 

 Mohammedanism, probably in the thirteenth century. Anciently, 

 the Malays used a writing of their own, but it is not yet clearly settled 

 what it was. There are now thirty-four characters employed, each 

 varying in form, according as it is isolated, final, medial, or initial. 

 Naturally, the Arabic influence over the language has been a marked 

 one; the priest who dictates in the religion of a people is a molder 

 and shaper of language. We have only to recall the Catholic Church 

 and the influence of the Latin tongue in the mouths of her priests to 

 know that this is so. Many Arabic words and phrases have been 

 adopted, but more in the language of literature than in that of every- 

 day speech. A large number of expressions of court and royalty, and 

 terms of law and religion, are Arabic; also the names of months, days, 

 and many articles of commerce and trade; nevertheless, the language 

 of common speech is still Malay. 



Another influence, also, has been felt in the Malay — that of the 

 Sanskrit language. The presence of many Sanskrit words has caused 

 some very ingenious theories to be constructed in proof that the Malays 

 were of Indian origin, and such word fragments the survival of the 

 primitive tongue. Such theories, however, have not stood the test of 

 philology, and the fact still remains that the language is essentially 

 unique, with an origin lost in the darkness of remote antiquity. How- 

 ever, Sanskrit influence has been much greater, and has penetrated 

 much deeper into the elemental structure of the language than the 

 Arabic. In fact, the aboriginal language, before it felt the animating 

 spirit of the Aryan tongue, must have been a barren one, the language 



