148 TRANSLITERATION OF MALAY, 
one Malay character and one sufficiently expresses the sound: ly 
buat, not buwat ; WS kuala, not kuwala: cls tuan, not tuwan. 
LIQUIDS. 
The combination of two consonants the latter of which is a 
liquid, which is so common in Aryan languages, is not to be found 
in indigenous Malay words. Where it apparently occurs its pre-. 
sence is caused by the elision of the vowel in one of the Polynesian 
prefixes ber, ter, ka, sa, and pe. 
There are, of course, plenty of Sanskrit words in Malay in which 
the junction of two consonants, one being a liquid, occurs, such as 
satru, indra, sri, mantri, but I believe that no instance of two con- 
sonants sounded together can be pointed out in Malay which can- 
not be accounted for either by foreign derivation or elision of the 
vowel of a particle. 
Malay is an agelutinative language, and many of its dissyllabie 
radicals have been developed from monosyllables by the prefix of 
particles. Their origin has been forgotten and by the gradual 
growth of the language they may be now lengthened into words of 
three, four and five syllables by the addition of prefixes and affixes, 
each change giving fresh development to the simple idea embodied 
in the radical. 
To analyse the origin of indigenous Malay words and to get 
some idea of their derivation, and of the connection between many 
which present distinct forms and get obvious similarity, it is ne- 
cessary to identify the agglutinative particles and to distinguish 
them from the root. Where the syllables are distinct this is easy ; 
in the words mekik, to cry out, to hoot; pekik, to squeal or scream 
as a woman ; berkik, the snipe, literally, the squeaker,—the common 
root kik, and the agglutinative particles, me, pe, and ber, are easily 
distinguished. | 
But where the first letter of the root or radical is a liquid, there 
is a tendency in pronunciation to blend with it the first letter of 
the particle. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that in spelling such 
words as pelandok, the mouse-deer ; pelantak, a ramrod ; peluru, a 
