PRACTICAL MALAY GRAMMAR COMPILED HY EKV. W. G. SHELLABEAK, MISSIONARY OK THK METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH : LATE ROYAL ENGINEERS. Authorof "A Malay-English Vocabulary"; "the Erolittion of Malay S{.wiling; " etc., etc. THIRD EDITION. SINGAPORE : PRINTED AT THE METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, 1912, P I* E F A C E. This work, as its name implies, is intended as a practical aid to English-speaking people in their efforts to acquire a knowledge of the Malay language. People naturally find it easier to grasp a new language if its grammatical construction is explained as far as possible in the same phraseology and on the same lines as they have been ac- customed to in learning their own and other languages. This grammar has therefore been arranged mainly on the usual pisin of the grammars of European languages, and all philological in- vestigations and scientific theories of the language have been " intentionally avoided, as being beyond the scope of a Practical Grammar." By means of a progressive series of exercises, the attention of the student is directed chiefly towards the construction of Malay sentences. The advantage of this plan will be recognised when it is remembered that the chief object which most learners have in view is not to read Malay books, but to form sentences and to speak the language. The exercises should of course be written without any other assistance than the vocabulary which accompanies each lesson, and the mistakes made should then be corrected by comparison with the Key, which will be found on page 68 and the following pages. A short series of Reading Exercises are given at the end of the Grammar, but they are in- tended as examples of Malay construction rather than for practice in reading. It is perhaps as well to caution the student at the outset against those corruptions of the language which have come into use to a great extent among the mixed populations of the large towns, The chief of these are the use of the verb knse-h or ka-*i IV PREFACE. in the Southern Settlements, and lilnn/l in IVnaiig and Province \Yelleslev. a> auxiliaries for the formation of transitive verbs, and the continual use of the possessive participle /uni/ii. Both of these are Chinese constructions, and in the Malay language they are (piite unnceessaiy and very chun.-y. W. G. S. Methodist Episcopal Mission, Singapore, S orember 1899. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITFOX. "i IK- steady demand for this Malay (rraminar having neces- sitated the printing of a second edition, the whole hook has been carefully revised, and a few verhal alterations made. Paragraph 101, on the use of the prefix m, has heen re\\Til- ten : and a more complete list of compound words has Ixvu substituted for the old list in Lesson XXVII. This latter change has heen made possible owing to the publication of my Malay- Knglish Vocabulary, to which the student is referred where the compounds formed with any particular word are very numerous. Malacca, July 190Jt. T.AUL.H OF CONTENTS. Page PRONUNCIATION AND OUTIEOGKAI'HY .. .. .. 1 LESSONS : I. The Article, Substantives and Adjectives .. 4 IE. Personal Pronouns . . . . . . . . 5 The Possessive Case 6 . . . . . . . . Possessive Pronouns . . . . . . . . 7 111. Demonstrative Pronouns .. .. .. 8 Interrogative Pronouns . . . . . . . . 8 I V. Relative Pronouns .. .. .. .. 9 Deflective Pronouns 10 . . . . . . V. Adverbs 11 ..12 VI. Preposiliun> .. .. .. .. Conjunctions . . . . . . . . 12 VII. .Numerals 13 . . . . .,. . . . . Fractional numbers . . . . . . . . 14. Collective numbers 14 . . . . . . .VIII. Time 15 IX. The Verb 16 Auxiliaries 17 . . . . . . . . X. The Verb Ada 19 XL (Questions and Answers .. .. .. ..21 XII. Negative Auxiliaries and the use of Negatives.. 23 XIII. The Verbs Sudali and Iftibix .. .. ..25 The Verb Kna 26 The Verb Jiri . . . . 2G XIV. Formation of ihc IMural 27 Numeral Co-eflicients or Classifiers .. ,.28 XV. (lender 30 . . . . ..30 Comparison of Adjectives ., .. VI TABLE otf COMTENTS. XVI. PRONUNCIATION AND ORTHOGRAPHY. For writing their own language the Malays have borrowed their characters from the Arabs. Those who intend to make a thorough study of the Malay language and literature will there- fore find it necessary to learn to read the Arabic character. But for the majority of those who wish to learn the rudiments of the Malay language the difficulty of obtaining any fluency in reading a new character often appears so great as even to discourage them from making a beginning. For this reason the Malay words in this grammar are all printed in Roman letters. The sys- tem of romanising adopted is the same as has been used in Shellabear's Vocabulary, the Triglot Vocabulary, the Straits Vocabulary, Straits'Dialogues/Malay and English School Primer, and all the other Malay publications of the Methodist Publishing House. This system is essentially the same as that which has been universally adopted for romanising the Amoy and Swatow and other dialects of the Chinese language. Vowels. The five vowels have the continental sounds: a as in father. o as in hole, e as the ey in they. u as in rude, i as in ravine. In addition to the above there is in Malay, as in nearly all oriental languages, another simple vowel sound which is often " called the short vowel sound." In the different systems of romanising, this short vowel sound has been variously represented by a, a, e, e, u, and u, but all of these different methods of re- presenting this vowel sound are open to the great objection that they mislead both Europeans and natives into giving it an incorrect pronunciation. Experience has shown that the best way to spell words containing the short vowel sound, with a view to helping the student to a correct pronunciation, is to omit the vowel altogether. This omission of the short vowel is the peculiar feature of the system of romanising used in this grammar. The exact sound of this "short vowel " can only be learnt by ear; it does not occur in any English word of one sylla- ble, but is almost identical with the half-vowel sound in the first syllable of such words as "machine," and "balloon." .When two consonants come together without a vowel between, 2 PRACTICAL MALAY GRAMMAR. the first consonant must be considered as having the short or inherent vowel sound, and is therefore sounded separately, as, 1-kas, t-pi, b-bal, etc. The double consonants ch, kh, sh, rg, and ry are of course exceptions to this rule, as they stand for single sounds. Where the single consonants Jc and h, or 5 and h would come together, the vowel a is inserted to avoid confusion with the double consonants l'h, sli, as in Ifcihandak, sahaja, etc.; in the word negri, however, it has been thought best to retain the conventional method of spelling with an e. When three con- sonants come together, the first two usually form a closed sylla- ble, and the third commences the second syllable, as in the words mm-baiki, rn-dali, pn-ja-ra; in a few cases, however, each consonant must be given its inherent vowel sound, as, m-l-top, p-n-bus, s-d-kah, but such words are so few in number that they present very little difficulty. In regard to the vowels a, e, i, o, u, it may be remarked that in open syllables the vowel sound has always a greater de- gree of intensity than in closed syllables. For instance, in the word padarg the a in the first syllable, pa, is pronounced much broader than in the second syllable. In the word gigit, the i in gi has a stronger sound than in the second syllable git, where it has more the sound of i in "bit." Similarly in the words bodoh and turut there is more stress on the open syllables bo and tu than on the closed syllables doh and rut; whereas in such words as pada, gigi, jodo and susu there is an equal heavy stress on both syllables; and so also in such words as nanjarg, chinchin, /,ondok, burykus, where both syllables are closed, the stress is equal in the two syllables, but is much lihgter than in open syllables, and the vowel therefore appears to have a shorter sound. It should perhaps be remarked here that English-speaking persons have a strong tendency to mispronounce the Malay vowel a, by giving it the short English sound; for instance, one often hears the word api pronounced something like the English word "happy," only without the h, and the first syllable of mnjanf is often pronounced like the English word "pan," and the second syllable is pronounced so that it would rhyme with "bang." Such short a sounds do not exist at all in the Malay language, and should be very carefully avoided. The first syllable of panjanj " should be pronounced more like the English word pun," and the second syllable should be made to rhyme with the English word " yoiing." The sound o or u in the last syllable of many words is not quite the same as either the o or the u sound given above.