Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/21

OF JAVA. 7 the characteristic brevity, or rather looseness, which belongs to the language, even these signs of the tenses are often omitted, and the meaning left to be gathered from the context. The most perfect portion of the verb is the pas- sive voice, unless we except the processes by which verbs are changed from intransitive to transitive. The most complex and artificial processes of Ja- vanese grammar are those by which one part of speech is formed from another. Most of the parts of speech admit of being changed one into the other, even with a degree of versatility beyond that of our own language. This is most commonly ef- fected by prefixing or affixing inseparable particles, or both ; but it not unfrequently happens, that the same word, in its primitive and most simple form, is used for several different parts of speech, — a prac- tice which particularly obtains in the spoken dia- lect, the more formal language of composition being usually somewhat more artificial in its struc- ture. The Javanese language is not less remarkable for its copiousness in some respects, than for its meagreness and poverty in others. In unimport- ant trifles, it deals in the most puerile and endless distinctions, while, in matters of utility, not to say in matters of science, it is utterly defective. These characters of the language belong to the peculiar state of society which exists among the people of