TRANSLITERATION OF MALAY. 143 
which should present common Sanskrit and Arabic words in un- 
couth forms hardly recognisable to students of those languages. 
It is submitted, therefore, that in a really sound system of 
Romanised Malay,—(1) the native spelling must be followed as far 
as possible; (2) educated native pronunciation must be followed in 
supplying vowels which are left unwritten in the native character ; 
(3) native pronunciation may be disregarded where the written 
version is not inconsistent with the true pronunciation of a Sans- 
krit or Arabic word. 
Examples :— 
li by Mari, come. (Here the four letters m, a, r andi 
exactly transliterate the four native letters). 
2. easel Tampang, & coin. 
Tampong, a patch. 
Tempung, a game. 
Tempang, lame. 
Tumpang, to lodge. 
These five words are spelt in the same way in the native character, 
in which only the consonants, ¢mpng, are written. Regard must, 
therefore, be had to pronunciation in assigning the proper vowels 
to them when rendered in Roman letters. 
8. (oye Mantr?, a minister. This word is pronounced by 
Malays Mntri, as if there were no definite vowel between the m 
and z, but its Sanskrit origin shews clearly that a is the vowel 
which ought to be supphed. 
Gps; 3 Putra, a prince, Putri, a princess; in these words, 
too, the vowel-sound in the penultimate is indefinite, but the vowel 
wis properly supplied, both being common Sanskrit words ; to write 
them petra and petri would be to disguise their origin. 
VOWELS. 
The difficulty of arriving at asatisfactory system of translitera- 
tion of Malay is caused partly by the insufficiency of the Arabic 
vowels to render the Malay vowel-sounds. 
The vowels borrowed from the Arabic are four :— 
| Alf, a, asthe ain father. Gr baniak, many, much, very ; 
