Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrai9101882roya).pdf/178

 one Malay character and one sufficiently expresses the sound: بوات buat, not buwai; كوالا kuala, not kuwala; توان tuan, not tuwan.

The combination of two consonants the latter of which is a liquid, which is so common in Aryan languages, is not to be found in indigenous Malay words. Where it apparently occurs its presence is caused by the elision of the vowel in one of the Polynesian prefixes ber, ter, ka, sa, and pe.

There are, of course, plenty of Sanskrit words in Malay in which the junction of two consonants, one being a liquid, occurs, such as sutra, indra, sri, mantri, but I believe that no instance of two consonants sounded together can be pointed out in Malay which cannot be accounted for either by foreign derivation or elision of the vowel of a particle.

Malay is an agglutinative language, and many of its dissyllabic radicals have been developed from monosyllables by the prefix of particles. Their origin has been forgotten and by the gradual growth of the language they may be now lengthened into words of three, four and five syllables by the addition of prefixes and affixes, each change giving fresh development to the simple idea embodied in the radical.

To analyse the origin of indigenous Malay words and to get some idea of their derivation, and of the connection between many which present distinct forns and get obvious similarity, it is necessary to identify the agglutinative particles and to distinguish them from the root. Where the syllables are distinct this is easy; in the words mekik, to cry out, to hoot; pekik, to squeal or scream as a woman; berkik, the snipe, literally, the squeaker,–the common root kik, and the agglutinative particles, me, pe, and ber, are easily distinguished.

But where the first letter of the root or radical is a liquid, there is a tendency in pronunciation to blend with it the first letter of the particle. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that in spelling such words as pelandok, the mouse-deer; pelantak, a ramrod; peluru, a