The Malay Archipelago (Volume 2); The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise a Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1869. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... theii way to the dust-heap along with other waste paper. I had previously copied out nine common words in the whole series of languages, and these are here given, as well as the remaining thirty-one vocabularies in full. Having before had experience of the difficulty of satisfactorily determining any words but nouns and a few of the commonest adjectives, where the people are complete savages and the language of communication but imperfectly known, I selected about a hundred and twenty words, and have adhered to them throughout as far as practicable. After the English, I give the Malay word for comparison with the other languages. In orthography I adopt generally the continental mode of sounding the vowels, with a few modifications, thus: -- English ....a e iorie ei o u u Sounded.... ah a ee i o e or eh oo These sounds come out most prominently at the end of a syllable; when followed by a consonant the sounds are very little different from the usual pronunciation. Thus, "Api" is pronounced Appee, while " Minta " is pronounced Minlah. The short ii is pronounced like er in English, but without any trace of the guttural. Long, short, and accented syllables are marked in the usual way. The languages are grouped geographically, passing from west to east; those from the same or adjacent islands being as much as possible kept together. I profess to be able to draw very few conclusions from these vocabularies. I believe that the languages have been so much modified by long intercommunication among the islands, that resemblances of words are no proof of affinity of the people who use those words. Many of the wide-spread similarities can be traced to organic onomatopoeia. Such are the prevalence of g (hard), ng, ni, in -words meaning " tooth;" of I and m in those for " tongue;...