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

DISSERTATIOX, l^^i
The only specimens of the Batak language which I have seen
are the short one given by Mr. Marsden, one in the INIalayan
]\Iiscellanies, and a very brief one in Mr. Anderson's Mission to
the East Coast of Sumatra. The specimen in the Malayan Miscel-
lanies consists of fifty-four words, of the following elements :
Malay, thi'ee words, Javanese five, common to the Malay and
Javanese, twenty-five, Sanskrit one, and seemingly native,
twenty, making the foreign words sixty-three out of one hun-
dred, or reducing the native portion to one third of the whole.
This is chiefly caused by the numerals, no fewer than sixteen in
number. Omitting these, justly considered foreign, the remain-
ing thirty-eight words give twenty native, and only eighteen
foreign words. A larger specimen, more impartially taken,
would assuredly show a still larger proportion of native words.
]\Ir. Anderson's specimens are examples of two Batak dialects,
for there appear to be several, consisting of about fifty words.
In one of these dialects called the Kurau-kurau, there are nine
words which are Malay only, four which are Javanese only, and
fourteen Avhich are common to these two languages, so that
near half the language appears to be original. In comparing
the two dialects, not fewer that twenty of the words diflFer, so
that, not improbably, what have been thought only dialects, will
be found distinct languages.*
Proceeding eastward, and passing the proper Malay, the next
language that occurs is the Korinchi. It is, however, substan-
^jjg
tially Malay, and so considered. In the thirty-one words
Korinchi.
g^ygj^ jjy ]\/[r. Marsden, I can discover but one that is
not genuine Malay. The Korinchi is written in a peculiar
alphabet, which most probably is the same in which the Malay
itself was written before the introduction of the Arabian letters.
It consists of twenty-nine characters. One of these represents
the vowel a, one is a duplicate, three are aspirates, and four are
characters for combinations of two consonants. The actual
number of consonants, therefore, is but eighteen. With the
exception of the palatals d" and t", which are not distinguished
from the coi'responding dentals, they are the same, in power
and number, as the letters of the Javanese alphabet, and
* Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra, 1826.