A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language - Wallace-online.org

DISSEETATION.
vii
they contain, just as a sentence of Welsh or Irish can be constructed
without the help of Latin, although of this language
they contain, at least, as large a proportion of words as the
Maori or Tahitian do of Malayan. The Maori and Tahitian
are, therefore, essentially the same language, and their Malayan
ingredient is extrinsic.
In an inquiry into languages in order to show their affinities,
it must be obvious that the examination of a limited
number of words can lead to no certain or useful conclusion, and
this is very satisfactorily shown by the vocabularies exhibited
by such careful and indefatigable scholars as Mr. Marsden and
Baron Humboldt. Mr. Marsden's English words amount to
thirty-four ; and of these, as far as his collections admitted, he
has given the synonymes in eighty Malayan and Polynesian
languages ; and it is from this meagre vocabulary that my
valued friend would prove the unity of the languages of all
the brown-complexioned races from Sumatra to Easter Island,
Ten words out of the thirty-four are numerals, three are adjectives,
and all the rest are nouns,—every other part of speech
being omitted. In the very first column of assumed native
words, viz., the Malay, five of the synonymes are Sanskrit
words,—a fact which touches on the history, but not on the
unity, of the languages. Baron Humboldt's vocabulary of
German words amounts to 134, and he has given their synonymes,
as far as his materials allowed, in nine languages, or
more strictly in six only, since four out of the number are
Polynesian dialects. His words are all nouns, adjectives, or
verbs, to the exclusion of every other part of speech. Favoured
with ampler materials than were possessed by my predecessors
in the inquiry, I have come to opposite conclusions.
After as careful an examination as I have been able to make
of the many languages involved in the present inquiry, and duly
The Malay
Considering the physical and geographical character of
neselan^ ^hc widc field ovcr which they are spoken, with the
nSfthe"'" social couditiou of its various inhabitants, I have come
widespread to ^hc couclusion that the words which are common to
^°'^'^^'
so many tongues have been chiefly derived from the
languages of the two most civilised and adventurous nations of