491 
APPENDIX. 
General Observations on the Malagasy Language— 
Outline of Grammar, and Illustrations. 
BY THE REV J. J. FREEMAN. 
The language of Madagascar belongs unquestionably to the 
family, or class of languages frequently denominated Malayan, 
but to which the term Polynesian appears far more appropriate, 
and has accordingly been applied to it by Mr. Marsden, in the 
Introduction to his Malayan Grammar, 1812. The Missionaries 
in the South Sea Islands have long been accustomed to desig¬ 
nate all those dialects found in the Polynesian countries, by the 
generic appellation “ Polynesian.” 
The fact of some close and important mutual relation sub¬ 
sisting between the dialects spoken through a vast extent of 
intertropical country in the Eastern seas, had been remarked 
by Cook and other voyagers; and from the commercial and 
political ascendancy formerly held by the Malays in those parts, 
the name “ Malayan” was accorded generally to those dialects 
which seemed to have sprung up, in some way, or at some 
period, from the Malay, as their common parent. A more 
extensive acquaintance with them, and a more careful compa¬ 
rison instituted between them, has led to the conclusion that 
these dialects are not to be regarded as descended from the 
Malay, but rather, as sustaining, according to the opinion 
expressed by Mr. Marsden,* the relation of sisterhood to it, and 
to each other. 
The living Malay language now spoken, or the vernacular 
dialect in the Malayan Peninsula, and other parts of the Eastern 
Archipelago, is itself only related to the great and compre¬ 
hensive Polynesian language, just as that of New Zealand, 
Tahiti, or Madagascar, may be related to it. The two most 
remarkable circumstances belonging to this Polynesian lan¬ 
guage are, the wide extent to which it has been carried, and the 
tenacity with which it has retained its own individual charac¬ 
teristics or idiosyncrasy, even in the contiguity of other more 
* On the Polynesian or East Indian Languages, in Miscellaneous Works, 
by W. Marsden. 1834. 
