566 
A SCHEME FOR REPRESENTING MALAYAN 
guages of the Archipelago as far as we yet know them. They will 
be as follow: a. a. e. e. i. o. u. 
The vowel a. has no representative in the Javanese or any other 
alphabet of the Archipelago except as an initial, but it is understood 
to follow every consonant, unless supplanted by the mark of another 
vowel, or suppressed by a sign of elision. Its sound in the Malayan 
languages is exactly that which it usually has in all the European 
languages, except our own, as exemplified in the Italian word casa, 
a house. The sound a. with an acute accent is intended to repre¬ 
sent a Malayan vowel which in the Javanese alphabet has a distinct 
mark. It is the u. of the English words “ but” or “ cut”. 
The voivel e. has a peculiar character in the Javanese, and, in¬ 
deed nearly all the other native alphabets. It has the sound which oc¬ 
curs twice in the Castilian word elevar, to raise. It is the e. in forme 
of the French, and the unaccented e. of the Italians in the word legge. 
The 6. with an acute accent represents a sound, frequent in the Sunda 
language, and some other little cultivated tongues, but it has no 
character in any native alphabet. It is frequent in the Celtic dia¬ 
lects, and approaches in sound to the French u. 
The sound of the native vowel represented by i. is the Italian one 
in the word Italia, and not the dipthong sound which we ourselves 
whimsically give it. The o. has a distinct character in the Javanese 
alphabet. It is the o. chiuso of the Italians, and the o. which occurs 
in our word “ tone”. U has also its peculiar character in the Java¬ 
nese, and indeed, in all the other native alphabets. The letter is pro¬ 
nounced as in the Italian, Spanish and German, and it is the oe of 
the Dutch, the on of the French, and the oo of the English. 
In writing native words, it is to be observed, that the vowel, ex¬ 
cept when long, and sometimes even then, is inherent in each Ara¬ 
bic consonant, as in the native systems. The same is the case with 
i and u at the end of a word. 
The dipthongs are but three, ae. ai. and au. In the Javanese al¬ 
phabet, they have no peculiar characters to mark them, but are 
simply expressed by the sequence of the vowels which compose them. 
It may here be added that neither in the Javanese, nor any other al¬ 
phabet of the Archipelago, does there exist a distinction by express 
characters between long and short vowels as in the Devvanagri. 
They are long or short, or more correctly, accented or unaccented, 
according to their position in a word, and in the vast majority of 
words, the accent of bisyllables is on the first syllable, and of poly- 
