THE EVOLUTION OF MALAY SPELLING. 85 



" owing- to the nature of its spelling-, in sneh words as 

 " boewang, tijang, the w and,/ are written, and must be used in 

 ki tranliterating them in our character, if one wishes to reproduce 

 " the original spelling exactly, these letters are quite superfluous 

 u in Malay transliteration. The union of oe and i with the follow- 

 " ing a, i, oe, takes place of itself in the pronunciation ; we do not 

 " write boiva, hiiejen, but simply boa, knieen ; and even less is iv 

 " or j necessary in boeang, tin tig, etc. If the Malay wrote the 

 " tashdid, it would be reasonable to represent it in the transliter- 

 " ation. Being opposed to superfluous letters, I write ia, tiap, 

 " loear, etc., which seem to me quite sufficient, as this method of 

 " spelling represents the pronunciation as clearly as one can de- 

 " sire." 



The Malays appear to prefer to divide the syllables as 

 follows: — ht-at. du-a, di-am, ju-a, mn-at, etc., for the modern 

 Malay spelling of such words is 



huat du a hit ih jua muat luar stasia 



sl^jJ VjJ o\y \y>- C->\f* j\Jl Y\+~ 



(b) Another frequent use of tashdid in the old MSS. is for 

 the purpose of doubling the consonant which follows the short 

 vowel, called by the Javanese pepet, the sound of which may be 

 described as equivalent to the short a in the English words " ba- 

 loon," "machine," etc. 



Among our old MSS. we find that Ii. 6. 45 of the Cam- 

 bridge MSS. is the most consistent in this use of the tashdid, the 

 following words which contain short vowels being thus spelt in 

 the brief extract given by v. Ronkel. 



balnea besar benar dergan Icekal Iras lebeh telah tergah 

 y>c j~\ -A». i>*° J^ u-y ^ ** *$ 



A portion of another Cambridge MS., Grg. 6. 40, in the hand- 

 writing of the Dutchman v. Elbinck, has the following words 



balnea besar belah gumetar Iceelul sru sudah telah tetap 



rt J" 





