166 Mr Crawfurd on the 



Javanese roots ai'e bisyllables ; but in the Malagasi they fre- 

 quently extend to four or even five sjdlables ; and when to these 

 are added, not monosyllabic prefixes or afiixes, as in Malay 

 and Javanese, but prefixes or affixes, of two, three, and even 

 of four syllables, the monstrous length of some compounds 

 may readily be supposed. From the root siilii already men- 

 tioned, although only of two syllables, is formed, for example, 

 the compound mampifampanolo, wdiich means, " to order to 

 cause to exchange," being a word of six syllables, of which 

 the languages of the Malayan family afford not one example. 

 But words of even double this length may be formed ! 



I come now to the evidence afforded by words. The Ma- 

 lagasi Dictionary, already quoted, contains about 8000 w^ords, 

 exclusive of compounds. I have gone carefully over it m*ore 

 than once, and can discover no more than 140 xjhicli are of 

 Malayan origin, which would make about ^^i\\ part of the 

 language. 



But to the dictionary is appended a list of words espe- 

 cially called roots. These amount to 500 ; and among them 

 I find just six Malayan words, and no more. 



The nature of the Malayan words found in the Malagasi, 

 is of much importance in the inquiry. Sixty are the names 

 of natural objects, and thirteen ai'e numerals. There is no 

 preposition among them, no auxiliary verb, nor any other 

 word essential to the structure of a sentence. The language, 

 in a w^ord, might be written or spoken without them, with 

 more ease, and that is not difficult, than good English can be 

 "written or spoken without the assistance of the Norman- 

 French portion of it. 



The Malayan words received into the Malagasi are, Avith 

 with few exceptions, corrupted in sound, a result to be ex- 

 pected from the wide diff"erence between the phonetic cha- 

 racter of the languages. The coiTuption extends both to 

 vowels and consonants. There are also corruptions of sense, 

 although not so frequent. 



Of the 140 Malayan words, 42 are exclusively Malay, 15 

 exclusively Javanese, and 73 common to these two languages, 

 while two are, I think, Bugis. The number is completed by 

 eight, suspected to be Sanscrit, of which six are tolerably cer- 



