ON THE ROOTS IN THE MALAY LANGUAGE. 200 
markable. The following will even more than exempli- 
fy this. These can be little doubt that words of this class 
would furnish us with an admirable insight into the an- 
cient condition of the people by whom they are employed 
were we but able, not only to make a complete collection of 
them, but also to discover their original meanings. A nation 
living by the seashore would observe and mimic sounds differ- 
ent from those which would strike the inhabitants of a plain 
or a mountainous district. In consequence of the limited 
space at our disposal we are compelled to confine ourselves, on 
the present occasion, to the investigation of a single tone, not 
one specially selected because it offers a particularly favourable 
example—representations of other sounds might have been 
found which would have served our purpose be tter—but mere- 
ly chosen by us because its plain, almost self-evident significa- 
tion causes it to be easily understood in our own (Kuropean) 
languagesalso. We allude to the word tik , equivalent to our tick. 
This word is directly comprehensible to alle irespective of na- 
tionality ; the Englishman, Frenchman, German, or Dutchman 
grasps the full force of its meaning, equally well with the Ma- 
lay, besides, the expressions fick and tick-tock are well known 
tous. The Malay says ¢ah, in imitation of the sound produced 
by striking a small hammer upon a stone-fiooring. Now it 
must be here remarked that, in giving this interpretation, we 
are quoting from Dewall’s lar ge dictionary of the Malay lan- 
guage, Where the explanations submitted in tracing the mean- 
ings of the various words are so comprehensive and lengthy as 
to speak well for the care bestowed upon the work. Y et they 
should not always be accepted without caution, since the possi- 
bility of error, occasionally apparent from a less happy choice 
of illustrations, 1s not always excluded. Well, in the above 
instance the Malay employs the work tak, but, when the table 
is struck with a stick he calls the tone thus produced 
toek (N. B.—oe=the English oo in poor in this and all the 
subsequent instances: the oe is the Dutch equivalent for the 
German w: we catch the difference of tone for it is flatter: 
hence the use of the oe). The tone in tak (pr: a as in English 
mar, but somewhat shorter, thus mdr) is sharper and clearer 
than in toek. It isa remarkable fact that t7/ is necessary to 
