142 TRANSLITERATION OF MALAY. 
The subject is a dificult one. Marspry, Crawrurp and Logan 
have failed to find a satisfactory settlement of it, but I do not think 
that the last word on it has yet been said. The following remarks 
on the transliteration and pronunciation of Malay words are offered 
to the Society with the view of drawing the attention of the Coun- 
cil to the advisability of the adoption for literary and scientific 
purposes of some better system of rendering Malay words in Ro- 
man letters than that hitherto recommended. 
GENERAL PRINCIPLES.- 
There are two objects to be kept in view in deciding upon a 
system by which to render Malay in Roman characters :— 
1st. To obtain a faithful transliteration of the Malay charac- 
ter. 
2nd. Toclothe the words in such a form that they may be 
pronounced correctly by an English reader. 
The first regards letters before sounds, the second regards 
sounds before letters. 
Hither of these objects may be attained separately, but to com- 
bine both without perplexing the reader is more difficult of accom- 
plishment. If the reproduction in some form or other of native 
letters (for some of which the English alphabet has no equivalent) 
is too exclusively attended to, the result may sometimes be a word 
which is difficult of pronunciation to the uninitiated. CrawFrurp 
claims the advantage of simplicity for his system, yet few persons 
probably would recognise in S’ex * the common Arabic word Sheikh. 
On the other hand, if the system be purely phonetic, the ear must 
be entirely depended on ; sounds which nearly approach each other 
will be mistaken one for another, and persons professing to use the 
same system will very likely speil words differently. 
Another important point must be borne in mind. Malay con- 
tains a large number of pure Sanskrit and Arabic words; it is 
necessary, therefore, to avoid any serious departure from the prin- 
ciples sanctioned by European scholarship of transliterating those 
languages. Any system of spelling Malay would be discredited 
* CRAWFURD’S Dictionary. 
