144), How, In What Way?

This vocabulary has been prepared for use in connection with my "Practical Malay Grammar." It was originally intended to incorporate with the Grammar an English-Malay and a Malay-English Vocabulary, each containing some three or four thousand words, but in view of the fact that most people require a vocabulary containing as large a number of words as possible and are subjected to much disappointment and annoyance when they find that their vocabulary does not contain just the very word which they require, it has been thought better to publish the vocabularies separately and to make them as complete as is consistent with the low price at which such works are expected to sell. The great defect of Malay vocabularies printed in the Roman character has always been the difficulty of finding many of the words owing to variations of spelling. This difficulty has been obviated in this work by the adoption of the same system of romanization which has been used in my Grammar and in all the other Malay publications of the Methodist Publishing House. It must be understood that the prefix m can always be used with deri- vative verbs formed with the suffix Jean or i; this being the case it has not been thought necessary to give the derivative formed with m as a distinct form of the word.

An appendix containing lists of English words with their Malay equivalents has been added. This makes it just as easy to find a word containing the short vowel as it is in a Malay dictionary printed in the Arabic character, for instead of having to look up such a word as nschaya or psaka under two or three different vowels, the student will be able to find it at once from the sound. Thus Sanskrit and Arabic words which are pronounced by Malays with the short vowel sound are so spelt in this vocabulary, whereas most lexi- cographers who use c for the short vowel have spelt such words with a, i, or u, as tanira, nixcJwya. As already stated, the inverted comma represents the Arabic nasal letter 'ain. It is placed before the vowel which has the nasal sound, as in the words 'alam, 'ilmu, m'alim, do'a. The same thing is done when a prefix ending in a consonant comes before a root com- mencing with a vowel, as m-tya-k-n from mig and aim. When in doubt the student must look for both forms. Prefix di-, which forms the passive voice.

Prefix ter, which forms past participles. It is important that the student should know the source from which such foreign words have come, in order that he may be able to discriminate between synonymous words and decide which should be used in conversation with the various nationalities ly whom Malay is spoken. The Malays have a remarkable aptitude for adopting foreign words, which in most cases become assimilated to the Malay style of pronunciation, the spelling being sometimes changed to suit the new pronunciation. Malays always say klimah shah a flat, it would be misleading to spell otherwise. Every morning, he would patrol the property to make sure everything was up to snuff. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. In derived words formed with the prefixes ber, ter, per, di- and Jc, the first syllable of the root undergoes no change, and the word can therefore usually be discovered without any difficulty, but with the prefixes m and p the root in many cases changes its form. In ordinary writing the hyphen should only be used where a word is reduplicated, or to separate from the words to which they are attached those prefixes, suffixes and other particles which do not form an integral part of the word itself; these are: the preposition k-.

Only those derivatives are given which are in ordinary use; the fact that any particular derived form is not found in the vocabulary must not be taken as an indication that it cannot be used. Experience has shown that the best way to spell words contain- ing the short vowel with a view to helping the student to a correct pronunciation, is to omit the vowel altogether, and it is believed that the omission of the vowel will obviate the difficulty of finding such words in the vocabulary. Some prefixes and suffixes are only used to form nouns, and others are used with verbs. Prefix m, used with transitive verbs. Suffixes kan and i, which form transitive verbs. The list of words which is here offered to the public contains over six thousand words and phrases. Sometimes several prefixes and suffixes are attached to the same word, and there is so much variety in their use that it would be extremely cumbersome to insert all such derived words in alphabetical order as separate words. The former arrangement, though perhaps scienti- fically correct, presents such unnecessary difficulties to the unsophistic- ated mind that a consistent system of phonetic spelling appears pre- ferable.