94 MALAY LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, 
Roman character has come to be largely used in writing and 
printing Malay. ‘This is also the case in the Straits Settle- 
ments.* 
By the simplicity of its phonetic elements, the regularity of 
its grammatical strnerare, and the copiousness of ifs nautical 
vocabulary, the Malay language is singularly well-fitted to be 
the lingua Jr anca thro ughout the Indian archipelago. It 
possesses the five vowels, a, 7, u, ¢, 0, both short and long, and 
one pure diphthong au. Its consonants are k, 9, ng; ch, a iit 
t,d,n, p,b,m, y, 7, 1, wv, s, kh. Long vowels can only occur in 
open syllables. The nae possible consimantal nexus in pure- 
ly Malay words is that of a nasal and mute, a liquid and mute 
and vice versa, and a liquid and nasal. TJ inal & and / are all 
but suppressed | in the utterance. Purely Arabic letters are 
only used in Arabic words, a great number of which have been 
received into the Malay voe cabulary. But the Arabic charac- 
ter is even less suited to Malay than to the other Kastern 
languages on which it has been foisted. As the short vowels 
are not marked, one would, in seeing, e, g., the word dning, 
think first of dintang, a star; but the word might also mean a 
large scar, to throw down, to spread, rigid, mutilated, enceinte, 
a kind of cueumber, a redoubé, accor ding as itis pronounced 
hantang, banting, bentang, buntang, buntung, bunting, bonteng, 
benteng. 
Malay is essentially, with few exceptions, a dissyllabic lan- 
cuace, and the syllabic accent ce on the penul timate unless 
that syllable is open and short; ¢, g., datang, namana, bésar, 
diumpatkanhdlah. Nothing in the. ‘on of a root word indi- 
cates the grammatical category to which it belongs; thus, 
kasth, kindness, affectionate, to love; gantt, a proxy, to ex- 
change, imstead of. It is only in derivative words that this 
vagueness is avoided. Derivation is effected by infixes, pre- 
fixes, affixes, and reduplication. Infixes occur more rarely i im 
Malay than in the Gone tongues. Examples are—guruh, 
a rumbling noise, gumtruh, to make such a noise; tunjuk, to 
point, telunjuk, the forefinger ; chichuh, to pierce, ‘ cherachuk, 
No. The Roman character has not yet been! adopted in the Straits 
Settlements, either in the Government Vernacular Schools, or by the Native 
Press. 
HD. 
