The noun admits of no variation in its form t®
express gender or number, which are effected by
adjectives, as the first is in our own tongue. One
simple inflection represents the genitive case, and
the other relations are expressed by prepositions ;
nay, even the prepositions, in situations where they
could not be dispensed with in other languages,
are omitted, and the sense left to be made out
from the context,—a practice very consonant to the
genius of the language.
The adjective is still more simple in its form
than the noun, admitting of no distinction of gender,
number, or case, and seldom of any change by
comparison.
The pronouns are equally invariable in their
form. Their position before or after a word determines
them respectively to be pronominal or adjective.
Those of the first and second person are
very numerous. There is none at all of the third,
except in a possessive form. Now and then the
word self is vaguely so used.
The verb, like that of other languages, may be
divided into active and neuter. There is but one
mood, the imperative, determined by any change
in the form of the verb. The rest are left to be
understood by the context. The simple form of
the verb expresses present time, one auxiliary a
perfect past, and another an indefinite future, and
these are all the tenses of a Javanese verb. With 10
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 passive
voice, unless we except the processes by which
verbs are changed from intransitive to transitive.
The most complex and artificial processes of Javanese
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 effected
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 practice
which particularly obtains in the spoken dialect,
the more formal language of composition
being usually somewhat more artificial in its structure.
The Javanese language is not less remarkable
far its copiousness in some respects, than for its
meagreness and poverty in others. In unimportant
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