which should present common Sanskrit and Arabic words in uncouth forms hardly recognisable to students of those languages.
It is submitted, therefore, that in a really sound system of Romanised Malay,—(1) the native spelling must be followed as far as possible; (2) educated native pronunciation must be followed in supplying vowels which are left unwritten in the native character; (3) native pronunciation may be disregarded where the written version is not inconsistent with the true pronunciation of a Sanskrit or Arabic word.
Examples:—
1. ماري Mari, come. (Here the four letters m, a, r and i exactly transliterate the four native letters).
2. تمڤڠ Tampang, a coin. Tampong, a patch. Tempung, a game. Tempang, lame. Tumpang, to lodge.
These five words are spelt in the same way in the native character, in which only the consonants, t m p n g, are written. Regard must, therefore, be had to pronunciation in assigning the proper vowels to them when rendered in Roman letters.
3. منتري Mantri, a minister. This word is pronounced by Malays M’ntri, as if there were no definite vowel between the m and n, but its Sanskrit origin shews clearly that a is the vowel which ought to be supplied.
ڤترا؛ڤتري Putra, a prince, Putri, a princess; in these words, too, the vowel-sound in the penultimate is indefinite, but the vowel a is properly supplied, both being common Sanskrit words; to write them petra and petri would be to disguise their origin.
VOWELS.
The difficulty of arriving at a satisfactory system of transliteration of Malay is caused partly by the insufficiency of the Arabic vowels to render the Malay vowel-sounds.
The vowels borrowed from the Arabic are four:—
ا Alif, ă, as the a in father. باڽق bāniak, many, much, very;
