536 VOCABULARY 



Influenced by this feeling, Sir Edward Belcher has resolved 

 to submit to the public the following vocabulary, which he 

 collected during his intercourse with the oriental islanders. They 

 consist of specimens of the Tagala, Iloco, Bisayan, Batan, Sooloo, 

 Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, with the corresponding words 

 in Malay, English, and Spanish. 



It is' of course unnecessary to remind the professed philologist 

 of the indisputable fact of the identity in origin of all the languages 

 of the Indian Archipelago and of the South Pacific; but the 

 general reader may perhaps require a brief intimation of the fact, 

 and of the relative position of these various dialects in the great 

 Malayo-Polynesian family. 



The Tagala, or more properly Gala, (ta being, according to 

 Dr. Leyden, merely the article,) the most ancient and wide-spread 

 of the dialects of the Philippine Group, is, perhaps, the most 

 remarkable member of the Malayo-Polynesian family. Its orga- 

 nism is by far the most perfect; its inflexions are most fully 

 developed ; and its peculiarities are retained in a state of greater 

 purity and freedom from admixture with foreign elements, than 

 is usually to be found in the case of those tribes who have been 

 exposed to the disturbing influences of Arabic and Spanish 

 connexions. The structure of the language has been examined 

 with great industry, and its elaborate and perfect organization 

 successfully elucidated, by Baron W. Von Humboldt, in the course 

 of the interesting inquiries contained in his ' Kawi-Sprache/ " I 

 commence," he observes (vol. ii. p. 315. 16.) "with the Tagala; 

 because it may be assumed as the primitive language and original 

 source of the rest, inasmuch as it contains the peculiar structure 

 of these languages in the clearest and most perfect form. It 

 embraces collectively all the forms of which only solitary examples 

 are discovered in the other dialects, and has preserved them, with 

 very trifling exceptions, unmutilated and in perfect analog}'." 



The grammatical structure of the language, although not gene- 

 rally known to philologists, is still accessible to all who are ac- 

 quainted with German literature ; but I am not aware that any 

 further attempts have been made to form a Dictionary and to 

 supply the curious enquirer with comparative tables, than a few 



