496 
APPENDIX. 
justly remarked by the eminent linguist already mentioned, 
in his Letter on the subject of the Affinities of Oriental Lan¬ 
guages, addressed to Sir Alexander Johnston; “ All research 
into the affinity of languages, which does not enter quite as 
much into the examination of the grammatical system as that 
of words, is faulty and imperfect; the proofs of the real affinity 
of languages, that is to say, the question, whether two lan¬ 
guages belong to the same family, ought to be principally 
deduced from the grammatical system, and can be deduced 
from that alone, since the identity of words only proves a 
resemblance such as may be purely historical and accidental.” 
It may be sufficient to name, as general analogies applying 
to the two languages under consideration—the want of declen¬ 
sions to indicate gender, number, and case, and the use of 
appropriate words for that purpose,—the postfixing pronouns 
to nouns by a change in their form, especially denoting pos¬ 
session,—forming verbs from roots by prefixing particles, the 
same particles to a great extent in the two cases, or rather, the 
same particle modified gratia euphonise, as me , men , mem , 
meng, in Malay, and mi, man, mam, mang, in Malagasy; the 
changes of initial consonants to coalesce with the said pre¬ 
fixes ;* the formation of the participle of agency by the use of 
a prefix, in Malay, pen , in Malagasy, mpan , (the m being but 
softly sounded;) the addition of an enclitic termination to a 
participle of action, an in Malay, ana in Malagasy, (final a 
nearly quiescent;) the formation of a passive voice by an 
inseparable particle, as in Malay, ter-bunoh killed, Malagasy, 
voa-vono killed ; placing the adjective before the noun ; besides 
various striking coincidences in the manner of forming deri¬ 
vative nouns and adjectives, and of the ordinal numbers from 
the cardinal, where it may be remarked, that the former, as well 
as the names of the days of the week, are nearly the same in 
the two languages. 
These circumstances, it is thought, are quite sufficient to 
establish the proof of the general identity of origin of the two 
languages ; or, certainly, their intimate relation to each other. 
It will be obvious, however, from a cursory perusal of the 
* Thus in Malay, toulong becomes menoulong 
— Malagasy, tapaka - manapaka 
— Malay, palou - memalou 
— Malagasy, potraka-- mamotraka 
— Malay, bunoh - membunoh, or mamounoh 
— Malagasy, vono - mamono 
— Malay, siram - meniiram 
— Malagasy, sasaka - manasaka 
— Malay, kata - mengata 
— Malagasy, kidihidy- mangidihidy 
