92 THE EVOLUTION OF MALAY SPELLING. 



j^> by the addition of the preposition *, becomes in the old 

 MSS. q\J!> although the pronunciation is not kudd-nya, but 

 huda-nya; and j\.>- becomes ,Jx>A>- although the word is 



pronounced jddikan and not jadilan. 



The first of the Dutch scholars to point out this discrepancy 

 between the spelling of derived Malay words and their actual 

 pronunciation appears to have been van de Wall, who in the year 

 1859 wrote as follows in the Tydschrift voor Indische Toed-, Loud- 

 en Volkenhnide: — " But the change of position of the lengthen- 

 " ing letter to, or its appearance in the penultimate of 

 " root words, has in most words no influence upon the 

 "accent, or at least very little; that is to say, the accent 

 " is in such cases not inherent in the long vowel. In 

 " general, the Malay retains in such cases the original accent, and 

 "says: bantu, bantni, 'perbantuan, bantu-nya, etc., shea, sewakan, 

 '• sewa'l, persewaan, sewa-nya, etc. But as the literary Malay al- 

 " ways has an inclination to modify the pronunciation of the 

 " people according to the way a word is written, he also lays a 

 " stress to some extent on the syllable which has the long vowel, 

 " so that there come to be, as it were, two accents — a strong or 

 " commanding one, the natural accent of the root, and a weak one, 

 " the grammatical accent on the long vowel. The variations be- 

 " tween strong and weak are very numerous, in different words 

 " and with different individuals, and there exists no fixed rule ; 

 " there are even words, though very few, in which owing to the 

 " change in the position of the long vowel the natural accent of 

 "the root is entirely lost and only the grammatical accent re- 

 " mains ; e.g. kata-nya, from kata ; tambargan from tambeng ; 

 " though one also hears tambargan ." 



Three years later, in Vol. XII of the same Journal, A. B. 

 Cohen Stuart raises a somewhat half-hearted protest against 

 van de Wall's statement in regard to the pronunciation of such 

 words. He says (page 68) : " It is not without hesitation that 

 " I venture some objections to this proposition. I feel how 

 " unfavourably I am situated as compared with Mr. van de Wall 





