Page:A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language with a Preliminary Dissertation- Dissertation and Grammar, in Two Volumes, Vol. I (IA dli.granth.52714).pdf/302

 and never in any considerable number. It cannot, at the same time, be said that the Malayan nations have borrowed nothing from the Chinese, for they have imitated some of their customs and arts, and adopted their more precise system of weights and monies. But to express what they have borrowed, with few exceptions, they use their own polysyllabic language. The Malayan languages, indeed, are found intermixed with the native tongue of the inhabitants of Formosa; but here they met, not with a monosyllabic, but a polysyllabic tongue.

The Siamese are another example to the same effect. They are conterminous with the Malays, and for many centuries have ruled over the four Malay principalities nearest to them; and many Malays are settled within the proper Siamese terri- tory. With all this, there is little admixture of languages. The Siamese have not adopted half-a-dozen words of Malay, and the Malays no Siamese words at all. On the frontier a mixed race has sprung up, known to the Malays by the appel- lation of Samsam, and this race speaks a jargon of the two tongues, which has made no progress on either side.

At the southern neighbourhood of the Archipelago we find, on the continent of Australia, a total exclusion of the Malayan languages, throughout its many tongues, arising from another cause,—in my opinion, the incapacity of the very feeble and very barbarous race which occupies the whole continent. The whole of the tribes of the Polynesian race have adopted Malayan words into their dialects, and all the Negro races whose lan- guages have been examined have done the same thing; but the Australians, who are much nearer to the source of supply than most of them, have not adopted a single word. This looks more like the incapacity of the lower animals to acquire lan- guage than anything else. The Malayan languages planted in Australia are like the seed of a plant of the Equator sown in the soil and climate of Nova Zembla, where they would not even vegetate.

No Malayan words have ever been traced to the languages of America, nor are they ever likely to be. The opposite pho- netic character, and grammatical structure of the American languages, would of themselves be sufficient to exclude Malayan