Page:Journal Of The Indian Archipelago And Eastern Asia Series.i, Vol.2 (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.107695).pdf/627

 guages of the Archipelago as far as we yet know them. They will be as follow: a. á. e. é. i. o. u.

The vowel a. has no representative in the Javanese or any other alphabet of the Archipelago except as an initial, but it is understood to follow every consonant, unless supplanted by the mark of another vowel, or suppressed by a sign of elision. Its sound in the Malayan languages is exactly that which it usually has in all the European languages, except our own, as exemplified in the Italian word casa, a house. The sound á. with an acute accent is intended to repre- sent a Malayan vowel which in the Javanese alphabet has a distinct mark. It is the u. of the English words "but" or "cut".

The vowel e. has peculiar character in the Javanese, and, in- deed nearly all the other native alphabets. It has the sound which oc- curs twice in the Castilian word elevar, to raise. It is the é. in formé of the French, and the unaccented e. of the Italians in the word legge. The é. with an acute accent represents a sound, frequent in the Sunda language, and some other little cultivated tongues, but it has no character in any native alphabet. It is frequent in the Celtic dia- lects, and approaches in sound to the French u.

The sound of the native vowel represented by i. is the Italian one in the word Italia, and not the dipthongdiphthong [sic] sound which we ourselves whimsically give it. The o. has a distinct character in the Javanese alphabet. It is the o. chiuso of the Italians, and the o. which occurs in our word "tone". U has also its peculiar character in the Java- nese, and indeed, in all the other native alphabets. The letter is pro- nounced as in the Italian, Spanish and German, and it is the oe of the Dutch, the ou of the Trench, and the oo of the English.

In writing native words, it is to be observed, that the vowel, ex- cept when long, and sometimes even then, is inherent in each Ara- bic consonant, as in the native systems. The same is the case with i and u at the end of a word.

The dipthongs [sic] are but three, ae. ai. and au. In the Javanese al- phabet, they have no peculiar characters to mark them, but are simply expressed by the sequence of the vowels which compose them. It may here be added that neither in the Javanese, nor any other al- phabet of the Archipelago, does there exist a distinction by express characters between long and short vowels as in the Dewanagri. They are long or short, or more correctly, accented or unaccented, according to their position in a word, and in the vast majority of words, the accent of bisyllables is on the first syllable, and of poly-