102 THE EVOLUTION OF MALAY SPELLING. 



It will be seen from the above that in Javanese the addition 

 of the suffix an, a, e or i doubles the preceding letter. Thus, 

 the addition of e to anal- produces not anake, but anakke, the 

 accent being shown in this way to be on the penultimate. When 

 Javanese is written with Arabic characters, the weak letter alif, 

 wau or ya is substituted for one of the double letters used in the 

 Javanese character. 



The resemblance between these Javanese forms* and the 

 spelling of Malay derivatives is so close that it amounts almost 

 to a demonstration that the Javanese or some similar character 

 was the medium through which the use of the strengthening 

 letter in the penultimate came into Malay spelling, regardless 

 of the pronunciation. The question has been raised before 

 whether the Malays had a written character of their own, 

 before they adopted the Arabic character. If that were so, 

 analogy would naturally lead us to suppose that such a charac- 

 ter would, like the Javanese, be based upon the Sanskrit, and 

 that would make the step from the Javanese to the Malay spell- 

 ing of derivatives which has been outlined above still easier, f 



* These Javanese double-letter forms can still be traced in Malay in the 

 double /.-, which has no doubt survived owing to the existence of the two 

 letters leaf and kuf. Thus we find that the Malays invariably U5e this me- 

 thod of spelling the words given below : 



J>o~»o ^l;^/ j^k* fj^X^ <j£*iV 



although the Dutch scholars have endeavoured for more than a century to 

 introduce what they consider more correct forms of spelling, namely : 



jr^Xjfuj fv. £v £4 



The fact that the Malays refuse to adopt these European spellings and 

 retain the double-letter forms, is to my mind at once a strong argument in 

 favour of their retention and an additional evidence in favour of the theory 

 that the spelling of Malay derivatives can only be explained as being based 

 upon the Javanese system of spelling. 



f Werridly, in the introduction to his grammar, written 170 years ago, 

 says on page 50 : "The first language from which the Malay language has 

 " borrowed some words is her neighbouring and kindred friend and sister the 

 •'Javanese language, with which many persons conjecture that she for- 



