A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language : with a preliminary ...

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PEONUNCIATION. 7
LETTERS OF THE ARABIC ALPHABET,
9 j h xcl srzss'
] ,_^ a^ lL^ XL r t ^ 6 J J u^ (Ji
3 11 t V a g { Jc k Imn
w aud o and u h y cousouant and e and i
5 o ^ a ts
SUPPLEMENTAL LETTERS REPRESENTING MALAY SOUNDS,
ch d' ng p g n
The marks which represent the short vowels are, a stroke
above the consouautj resembling an acute accent, for a; one
below it, of the same form, for or i ; and one above and a
little before it, resembling a small comma, for 6 or u, named by
the Malays, respectively, baris diatas, baris dibawah, and baris
diad-ap, or the stroke above, below, and before the letter.
PRONUNCIATION.
In the Javanese and other native alphabets of the Archipelago,
there exist no characters to distinguish long and short vowels
and, practically, the distinction may be said to be unknown to
the Malays. Vowels are long or short according to their posi-
tion. An accented vowel is a long, and an unaccented a
short one. There are a good many monosyllabic words in the
language, and a good many words of two syllables are made
so by abbreviation, or, at least, are frequently in that form,
especially in the oral language. Thus, araas, gold, becomes
mas; ambun, dew, bun; aram, to brood, ram; uwang, money,
wang; iyu, a shark, yu; karis, a dagger, kris; bari, to
give, bri ; bjllah, to split, blah ; bali, to buy, bli. The great
majority of radical words, however, are bisyllables : a few
consist of three syllables, and a still smaller number of four.
Compound words extend, although very rai'ely, even to five
;