Tagala or Philippine alphabet, as the most perfect and the rudest, may be briefly
described as examples. As to the Javanese, the vowel a is inherent in every consonant,
unless there be a mark of elision, or the s i p of another vowel which supersedes
it, and thus, every consonant is a syllable ending in a, and even the initial a itself
becomes another vowel when accompanied by the mark or sign of one. This produces
the necessity of a contrivance to elide the terminal vowel a. At the end of a word fhis
is effected by a peculiar orthographic mark, but in the middle of one by supplemental
secondary consonants corresponding in number with their primitives. Their presence
implies the elision of the inherent vowel. Most of them are written under the primary
characters, and differ from them in form. The liquids alone are joined to the
primary characters. The nasal ng, as in the Hindu alphabets, preceded by a vowel,
is expressed by a dot over the primary letter, and the aspirate always following a
vowel, and ending a word or syllable, is expressed by an orthographic mark only, as
in the case of the vowels. The Javanese alphabet is, beyond all doubt, the most
perfect of all the insular alphabets, and has every appearance of an original alphabet,
invented where it is now chiefly used. Although Hindu influence was far greater in
Java than in any other country of the Archipelago, it has not adopted the aspirated
consonants, nor, as some ruder alphabets have done, the metrical arrangement of the
Hindu alphabets,—perhaps, indeed, taken nothing from the Hindus, unless the char
racter for eliding the inherent vowel at the end of a word, the sign for the nasal by
a dot over the consonant, and the character for the aspirate after a vowel.
The substantive letters of the Tagala or Philippine alphabet amount to sixteen, but
three of those are vowels, namely, a character which represents a, one which represents
either e or i, and another which expresses indifferently an o or an «. Instead ol
five vowel marks, as in the Javanese, there are but two, one being a dot above, and
another a dot below the consonant, the first representing either e or i, and the last
either o or u. There is no character to represent an aspirate. No liquid in this class
of languages coalesces with a consonant except I, and the alphabet has no sign to
indicate when this takes place. The Tagala has been described as a writing as easy to
read as it is difficult to comprehend, because you have always to guess, both at sense
and pronunciation. Examples have been given of a combination of the same letters
which admit of seven, or even eight, different pronunciations and meanings whereas m
the Javanese alphabet, which has characters to represent every sound in the language,
. jn which every letter is pronounced, and in which the same letter has always the same
sound, a word can be pronounced only in one way. Prom the rudeness of the one
alphabet to the perfection attained by the other, there is a very wide interval, but pro-
bably not a greater than existed in the social condition of the nations using them
when first seen by Europeans. .
I t will be observed that the invention of written language is confined to three
islands, Sumatra, Java, and Luzon, or, at the utmost, to four, if we include the
obsolete character attributed to Sumbawa. These are all among the larger islands,
and no writing is known to have ever sprung up in any sinall one, or even in some of
considerable extent, as Floris and Timur in the Malay, and Panay, Leyte, and Samar
in the Philippine Archipelago. Even some of the largest have produced none, as Borneo,
Mindano, and New Guinea. I t is a product of civilisation, and civilisation could not
easilv spring up in the sterile soils and unsuspicious circumstances of these last islands.
The languages of the Malay and Philippine archipelagos have received more or less
of an admixture of foreign tongues. These are, Sanscnt, Arabic, Telugu, Persian, and
Portuguese, but of the two first only to any considerable amount.
which they exist is greatest in the most cultivated languages,_ while there is hardly a
vestige of them in the ruder. It is also greatest in the countries nearest to the sources
from which they have been derived, Hindustan, Arabia and Persia, that is, in the
western parts of the Indian Islands, while they are gradually diminishing as we recede
from them in an easterly, northerly, and southemly direction. Thus the amount is
large in Malay and Javanese, trifling in the languages of the Philippines, and no
words of them are found at all in the languages of the islands of the Pacific.
A singular fact respecting the dissemination of one or more of the Malayan languages
themselves is well attested. Satisfactory traces of them have been discovered m most
of the languages of all the islands from Easter Island, m the Pacific, to Madagascar, close
to the continent of Africa, and from Formosa, in the northern, to New Zealand in the
southern hemisphere. This wide field includes the languages of men of the Malay and
Polynesian races, with brown complexions and lank hair, and of Negnto, Papuan, Polynesian,
and African negros with dark complexions, frizzled hair and snouty faces.
The generally adopted explanation of this wide dissemination of language amounts to
this that the manv existing tongues were originally one language, through time and dis-
S c e spht X m L ^ T e c t s , and th a t all the people speaking these supposed dialects
^ essentially of one and the same race of man. But as this hypothesis could not
well be maintained in the face of a negro population, the negros and their languages
have been specially excepted on the erroneous supposition th a t no words of the common
nave Deen sp e c iav £ Some of the objections to this theory, exclusive of
thegpalpTble and now well-ascertained one of the existence of Malayan words in all the
nemo languages, are sufficiently obvious. I t supposes, for example, that languages and
races are identical, taking it of course for granted that men are bom with peculiai languages
as they are with peculiai- physical conformations, and that both are alike unchangeable.
Many well-known events of authentic history sufficiently refute this notion.
I t is quite certain that within the Malayan Archipelago respecting which our information
is most complete, no languages exist derived from a common stock, and standing
to each other, in the relation of sisterhood, as Italian, Spanish, and French do to each
other, and from the existence of which such a parent tongue might be inferred, as
Latin is to these languages. Another insuperable argument against the theory of one
original tongue is found in the nature of many of the words of the imagined derivative
dialects. These abound in terms, very widely diffused, indicating an advanced state of
society; as, for example, a comprehensive system of numeration, terms connected with
a»Ticulture, navigation, the useful arts, and even with letters. The people that possessed
a language with such terms must necessarily have been m a tolerably advanced
state of civilisation,—such a one, for example, as we find the principal nations of Java
and Sumatra to be now. Instead of this, many of the tribes which the theory supposes
to be derived from the imaginary nation in question, not only did not maintain
the civilisation of the fancied parent, but have fallen into the condition of mere savages
—a result at once improbable and contrary to the usual history of society. Others,
again, have native terms of their own to express the class of words to which we have
alluded, as in the case of the numerals. If the alleged parent nation had ever existed,
we ought surely to have been able to trace it to its locality. The name of the language,
and the name and habitation of the people who spoke it, ought to have been known and.
traced, and certainly would have been so had such a people or language ever existed.
The tests applied by the supporters of the theory to prove the existence of a
common original language, have consisted in the essential identity of a few words,
and in a supposed agreement in grammatical structure. The last of these tests has
been chiefly relied on by recent German writers. I cannot, however, attach much importance
to them; particularly when applied to languages generally of very simple
structure, and therefore presenting few salient points for comparison. Even here,
however, there is so broad a difference between the languages of Sumatra, of the
Philippines, of Madagascar, and the Polynesian Islands, that no one can reasonably
think that they can be brought under the same category. With respect to the test
by identity of words, it is certain that the number and the particular description of
words are alone entitled to any weight; and that the existence of a small number
of words common to the languages in question, is no more a proof of their derivation
from a common tongue, than the existence of Teutonic words in the languages of
the south of Europe, that they are derived from a German tongue and not from Latin.
I t has been imagined by some writers, that when the class of words expressing the
first and simplest ideas of mankind, happen in some cases to be the same in two or
more languages, such languages may be concluded to be derived from one stock.
This certainly does not accord with my experience of the Malayan languages; for I
find that easily pronounced words of any class readily find admission into them, the
simplicity of their structure affording facility for adoption. Instead of words of
simple ideas being excluded, I should, on the whole, owing to the frequent and familiar
use of the ideas they express, consider them the most amenable to adoption.
Accordingly, such words will be found either to have supplanted native words
altogether, or to be used as familiar synonyms along with them. Thus, to give
some examples : in Malay, the most familiar words for the head, the shoulder, the
face, a limb, a hair or pile, brother, horse, elephant, the sun, the day, to speak, and
to talk or converse, are all Sanscrit. From the same language, we have in Javanese :
the head, the shoulders, the throat, the hand, the arm, the face, father, brother, son,
daughter, woman, horse, —to say nothing of synonyms for the hog, the buffalo, and
dog, the sun, the moon, the sea, and a mountain. In the principal Philippine language,
although the whole number of Malay words in it does not exceed one-fiftieth
part, we find the following Malay or Javanese terms,—head, brain, hand, finger, elbow,
hair, child, feather, sea, moon, rain, to speak, to die, to give, to love. In the Maori,
f 2