46 MALAY AND ENGLISH SPELLING. 



to endeavour to represent Chinese sounds in Roman letters. 

 The great difficulty in doing this arises from the fact that in 

 every dialect of Chinese there are sounds which no combinations 

 or modifications of Roman letters are able to express adequate- 

 ly ; so that the best system must be imperfect, and can only ap- 

 proximately represent Chinese words. Those members of the 

 Committee who are most conversant with the Chinese language, 

 are, however, of opinion, that the system suggested below is sa- 

 tisfactory as far as it goes ; and further, that no additional mo- 

 dification of the Roman letters would be of any substantial ad- 

 vantage. But they strongly recommend that to secure identi- 

 fication in all important documents, Chinese names should be 

 written in the Chinese as well as in the Roman character. 



3. The difficulties in the way of writing Malay in Roman 

 letters are not so great: still there are difficulties which every- 

 body who has attempted to deal with the subject has felt. The 

 chief of these is to be found in the circumstance that in Malay, 

 more frequently than otherwise, the vowels are not expressed; 

 so that here also as in Chinese, it is sounds and not letters that 

 have to be represented. It should, however, be observed that 

 the Malay writing is so far phonetic that the Roman characters, 

 according to the system recommended by the Committee, will in 

 the main give the spelling as well as the sound. Again, in or- 

 der to help persons unacquainted with, or possessing but little 

 knowledge of the language, it has been found absolutely neces- 

 sary to mark the difference between short and long vowel sounds 

 hy accents of some kind, and great care is required to make 

 these as intelligible as possible : and for simplicity's sake, as few 

 as may be. Moreover, some of the consonants in Malay have 

 no single equivalent, and others in certain situations have a 

 special and peculiar use. 



4. Hitherto no one system of spelling has been generally re- 

 cognized and adopted, which has led to several absurd mistakes, 

 such as Seldngor being spelt as Salengore, Lurut as Laroofe, 

 Kr/'au as Carreean ; but the various authorities in Malay, how- 

 ever they may differ on other points, have with one consent 

 adopted the Continental or Italian system of vowels as best 

 suited to the requirements of Malay ; and the Committee have 

 no hesitation in following them so far. 



The following system they believe to be sufficiently accurate, 

 and as simple as the circumstances of the case permit. 



