VOCABULARY. — BY It. S. DOUGLAS. 
77 
Thus the vowels :— 
a is long and pronounced as in father. 
e ,, short „ 
i ?, long ,, 
o „ long ,, 
u ,, long ,, 
a i ,, 1 o n g ) , » i 
au ,, long ,, 
ei ,, long ,, 
ou has the same sound 
,, in bet or end. 
,, the l ee in beet. 
,, in note. 
,, in flute. 
,, the T in ice. 
,, l ow' in how. 
,, 'ey' in they. 
as au but not so broad. 
The consonants are all pronounced as in English, 
except *c\ which is always soft, and l g\ which is hard, 
the soft l g\ being rendered by The letter l y' is al¬ 
ways used as a consonant. l ng' should always be 
sounded as in singer, the hard l ng' as in finger being 
given as l ngg'. 
Grammatical rules seem few and far between. Nouns 
have no plural or case determinations. Adjectives 
always follow the nouns they qualify. 
There seems to be no manner of determining a verb, 
although the frequent occurrence of verbs beginning 
‘me , (the ‘e eliding before vowels) seems to point to 
something. 
Examples :— Me njat, to pull. 
Mutun, to cut. 
In Kayan several verbs begin with l ng' and l ny\ such 
as ngileh, to go down, and nyewa, to avenge. 
In Kenyah the same happens with the letters ( ji', 
as jimagap, to feel, and l pe\ ^epatei, to kill. 
The past and future are expressed by putting the 
equivalents for ‘have’ and ‘p resen tly’ before and after 
the verb respectively. Thus in Kayan :— 
“I have come” is rendered “Akwi oh atang.” 
and “I will come” is rendered “Akwi atang naa". 
In Kenyah the same is translated :— 
“Aki le-pak nai.” 
“Aki nai naa." 
and in Kalabit:— 
“Wi penga meching.” 
“Wi meching naa." 
