Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/134

 116 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE in any other language of the Archipelago. Stilly however, the harshness and variety of the Arabic consonants are so hostile to the few soft and sim- ple sounds of the Insular languages, that the num- ber of words naturalized in the Malay is very in- significant, and even some of these are softened down to the standard of Polynesian pronunciation. Mars- den, as stated in another place, with accuracy con- siders the number of Arabic words adopted into the Malayan, not to exceed twenty or thirty ; but, by a sanctioned pedantry, a writer introduces words, or whole sentences, at pleasure, as is practised in all languages of which Arabic is the sacred text. In languages, not written in the Arabic character, such a practice is generally excluded, but these, too, are not without expedients. When treating of religious topics, the Javanese priests write their native tongue in a modified Arabic character, and the nations of Celebes follow a more awkward plan, often intermixing the Arabic and native character in the same manuscript. Notwithstanding these contrivances, words are often so disguised, parti- cularly in oral language, that it is only through the awkwardness of sound that we are led to suspect them to be aliens. The Arabic word mufdMt is made, for example, pakat in Malay ; and fekir, in the pronunciation of the Archipelago, is piker ; sa^ habat is sabat The changes in the Javanese are the most violent of all, sometimes leaving hardly a feature of resemblance with the original. Sahah