603 



theii way to the dust-heap along with other waste paper. 1 liad 

 preyiously copied out nine common words in the whole series of 

 languages, and tlicse are here given, as woU as the remaining 

 tliirty-one vocabularies in full. 



Having before had experience of the difficulty of satisfactorily 

 didtermining any words but nouns and a few of the commonest 

 adjectives, where the people are complete savages and the 

 language of communication but imperfectly known, I selected 

 about a hundred and twenty words, and have adhered to litem 

 throughout as far as practicable. After the English, I give 

 the Malay word for comparison with the other languages. In 

 orthography I adopt generally the continental mode of sound- 

 ing the vowds, with a few modifications, th^s : — 



English . . . . a e i or ie ei 0 ii a 

 Sounded .... ah a ee i o 6 or oh oo 



These sounds come out most prominently at the end of a syllable ; 

 when followed by a consonant the sounds are very little different 

 from the usual prominciation. Thus, "Api" is pronounced 

 Apptti while " Minta^' is pronounced MiniaL Tlie short ii ia 

 pronounced like er in English, but without any trace of tlie 

 guttural. Long, short, and accented syllables ar« marked in the 

 usual way. Hie languages are grouped goo^^raphicaUy, passing 

 from west to east ; those from the same or adjacent islands being 

 as mtich as possible kept together. 



I profess to be able to draw very few conclusions fix)m these 

 vocabularies. I believe that the languages have been so much 

 modified by long intercommunication among the islands, that 

 resemblances of words are no proof of affinity of the people 

 who use those worda. Many of the wide-spread Bimilarities 

 can be traced to organic onomatopoeia. Such are the preva- 

 lence of (hard), ng, «i, in words meaning "tooth;*' of I 

 and m in those for " tongue of i^ge , ung, mo, in thofie for 

 " nose." Others are plainly commercial words, as " salaka " and 



