244 ON THE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE 



signify little Siamese, but only chief Siamese ; the true 

 meaning of nay, being chief or head. It is a term of 

 similar import with nayen, nayer and nayenmar, used 

 in Malabar, as the appellation of the military cast, or 

 ?iaya-ka, in Sanscrit. 



The Tliay or Siamese language appears to be in a 

 great measure original; and is more purely monosyl- 

 labic, and more powerfully accented, than any of the 

 Indo-Chinese languages, already mentioned. It cer- 

 tainly is connected, in some degree, Avitli some of 

 the Chinese dialects; especially the Mandarin or 

 Court language, with which its numerals, as well as 

 some other terms, coincide, but these are not very 

 numerous. It borrows words freely from the Bali, 

 but contracts and disguises more, the terms which itj 

 adopts, than either the Ruklieug or the Barma. In 

 its finely modulated intonations of sound, in its ex- 

 pression of the rank of the speaker, by the simple 

 j[;)ronouns, which he uses, in the copiousness of the 

 language of civility, and the mode of expressing 

 esteem and adulation, this language resembles the 

 Clwiesc dialects, with which also, it coincides more 

 nearly in construction than either Barma or Rukheng. 

 Its construction is simple and inartificial, depending 

 almost solely on the principle of juxta-position. Re- 

 . lative pronouns are not in the language; the nomi- 

 native regularly precedes the verb, and the verb pre- 

 . cedes the case which it governs. When two sub- 

 stantives come together, the last of them is for the 

 most part supposed to be in the genitive. This idiom 

 is consonant to the Malayu, though not to the Barma 

 or Ruk'heng, in which, as in English, the first sub- 

 stantive has a possessive signification. Thus, the 

 phrase, " a mail's head^' is expressed in Barma and 

 Rulihhig, by la-kliaung, which is literally man- 



