Article

Languages

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Languages

The study of languages in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, as documented in the scholarly literature of the Straits and Malayan Branches of the Royal Asiatic Society, spans a wide field of inquiry: from the comparative reconstruction of Malayo-Polynesian proto-forms to the documentation of local dialects, the tracing of foreign lexical borrowings, and the analysis of contact varieties born of centuries of maritime and commercial interaction. The records reveal a discipline that evolved from the practical lexicography of colonial administrators into a more rigorous comparative philology, yet one that remained throughout deeply anchored in the material realities of the region—its rivers, its markets, its gardens, and its inscriptions.

Scope and Historical Definition

The earliest linguistic work in the Society’s literature was driven by the need to document languages that had no written tradition and were spoken by communities with little contact with the colonial administration. C. O. Blagden’s 1894 comparative study of the dialects of the Malay Peninsula’s aboriginal tribes represents one of the most ambitious attempts in this vein, drawing on vocabularies of at least a dozen groups—Negrito Semang, the fairer Sakai, and mixed Malayan tribes of the south—and setting them against Mon (Peguan), Khmer (Cambojan), and a range of dialects from the Mekong valley and southern Siam [1, pp. 28–40]. Blagden’s central argument was that a substantial layer of Mon-Annam vocabulary preserved in these mutually unintelligible Peninsular dialects testified to a former period of political dominion by a Mon-Annam race over the Peninsula before the Malay migration [1, p. 21]. He noted that the Sakai dialects shared the Mon-Annam syntactical structure (subject–verb–object), while the Negrito Semang dialects followed a different order (genitive before noun; object before verb), indicating that the two groups experienced the Indo-Chinese influence through different mechanisms [1, pp. 43–44]. The Johor dialect recorded by Miklucho-Maclay possessed a numeral series extending to seven that matched the Peguan (Mon) system rather than either old or modern Khmer, suggesting the Peninsular Mon-Annam element predated the divergence between the two branches [1, pp. 48–49].

In Borneo, the documentation of non-Malay languages proceeded through expedition-based fieldwork. J. C. Moulton’s 1912 appendix to his account of the ascent of Mount Batu Lawi in the upper Limbang district of Sarawak presents a comparative vocabulary of approximately 150 lexical items in three closely related but distinct languages—Tabun, Murut, and Kalabit—encountered along the route from the Limbang River through the Madihit valley to the mountain itself [2, pp. 100–104]. The vocabulary covers body parts, natural phenomena, domestic life, animals, and abstract concepts, with each entry tagged by language to identify cognates and divergences. Shared items across all three languages include arōrr (river), kumān (eat), apui (fire), bulan (moon), langit (sky), and batu (stone), while notable divergences such as ina versus tinan for “mother” and ko’ud versus kokod for “leg” indicate regular sound correspondences between the varieties [2, pp. 100–104]. Moulton explicitly notes that the Tabun, Murut, and Kalabit speakers he met were mutually intelligible to a significant degree, with Tabun speakers acting as natural interpreters between the other groups and the Dayak and Malay-speaking members of the party [2, p. 25].

Dialects, Contact Varieties, and Regional Registers

The documentation of Malay dialects and contact varieties constitutes a substantial strand of the literature. H. S. Haynes’s 1900 list of approximately 200 Brunei-Malay terms, collected in the field, documents a distinct Malay variety spoken in the Brunei region, spanning maritime and fishing vocabulary, agricultural terms, domestic life, the natural world, and the body and health [3, pp. 39–48]. Maritime and fishing vocabulary is particularly dense, with terms for specific boat types (Dapong, Lambu), nets (Salambo, Selereng, Seut), and fishing implements (Sangup, Pungarusan), reflecting the centrality of the sea to Brunei society [3, pp. 40–46]. The list also preserves terms for supernatural and spiritual concepts—Kalindo (jungle spirit), Sampar (evil spirit), Gusey (sacred jar)—offering a window into the cosmological vocabulary of Brunei-Malay speakers at the turn of the century [3, pp. 42].

H. B. Marshall’s 1921 vocabulary of Brunei Malay, comprising 505 base entries supplemented by 24 words from W. H. Lee-Warner and 23 from C. N. Maxwell’s 1893 Limbang list, represents a more systematic treatment [4, p. 45]. The document’s principal scholarly contribution is the comparative annotation system provided by J. C. Moulton, Director of the Raffles Museum, Singapore, who marked each word with ‘S’ if it was also used in that form and sense in Sarawak, ‘W’ if it appeared in Wilkinson’s Malay Dictionary, and provided footnoted parallels and possible derivations [4, p. 45]. Moulton’s assessment was that the majority of Brunei Malay lexical items had clear parallels in Sarawak Malay, Malay Peninsula Malay, or Dayak languages, leaving only about 35 per cent as genuinely distinctive Brunei words for which etymological connections remained to be established [4, p. 45]. The vocabulary records three distinct rudder types—kemudi si-babau (operated from the bows), kemudi sepak (the standard Malay rudder with forked pampang support), and the kaskul (the Sultan’s lenguai or sireh stand, a term of royal specificity)—and documents Brunei measures: 1 babat = 10 kayu = $1.40; 1 kayu = 40 panggal [4, pp. 48].

W. G. Shellabear’s 1913 study of Baba Malay—the colloquial variety of Malay spoken by the Straits-born Chinese—represents one of the earliest systematic attempts to describe a Chinese-influenced Malay variety as a distinct linguistic entity rather than a mere corruption [5, pp. 40–63]. Shellabear identifies four principal divergences from pure Malay: the incorporation of Chinese vocabulary pronounced in a Malay phonological system without the tonal distinctions of Hokkien; the absence from the Baba lexicon of a large body of Malay synonyms and derived forms; systematic mispronunciation of Malay words (final ai reduced to e, final h dropped, final a hardened to ak); and the adoption of Chinese syntactic patterns, particularly the overuse of the possessive particle punya in the manner of the Hokkien e [5, pp. 54–58]. The most frequently used Chinese-origin words in Baba Malay are the first- and second-person pronouns goa (“I”) and lu (“you”), while kinship terms are overwhelmingly Chinese with a corrupted prefix (e.g., ‘ntia for father, ‘rgkong for grandfather, tachi for elder sister) [5, p. 54]. Shellabear notes that the Babas never use the Malay polite register—bonda, adinda, kakanda, firman, titah, sabda—nor the full system of pronominal hierarchy; the entire apparatus of Malay honorific phraseology is “practically unknown” to them [5, p. 57].

T. H. Haynes’s 1886 trilingual vocabulary comparing English, Sulu, and Malay terms, with comparative notes on cognates across Javanese, Sundanese, Buginese, Dayak, Tagalog, and Bisayan, represents an earlier phase of this dialectal documentation [6, pp. 191–239]. The list covers body parts, verbs of motion, abstract nouns, and nautical terminology, with editorial notes offering derivations from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and Tamil sources.

Foreign Words and Comparative Philology

The tracing of foreign lexical borrowings into Malay was a sustained scholarly preoccupation. A. W. Hamilton’s 1919 article presents a compiled list of approximately 150 Malay lexical items whose etymologies had not yet been recorded in R. J. Wilkinson’s Malay-English Dictionary, the majority traced to Hindustani, with significant numbers from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Tamil, Portuguese, and English [7, pp. 29–38]. Hamilton’s central intellectual contribution is a methodological challenge: if practically all Malay words of Persian origin, and a very large number of those of Sanskrit and Arabic origin, are also found in Hindustani, then it becomes “an open question” whether these words were incorporated into Malay through the medium of Hindustani rather than from their direct sources [7, p. 29]. Several entries reveal Portuguese as an intermediary source for words that appear superficially Indian: almari (from Portuguese almario), amah (from Portuguese ama), aya (from Portuguese aia), kamra (from Portuguese), nanas (from Portuguese anânâs), tembakau (from Portuguese tabaco), tangki (from Portuguese tanque), and teringket (from Portuguese triquete) [7, pp. 29]. English-origin borrowings include galis (from gallows), jalibot (from jailboat), kartus (from car-touch), hansil (from hawser), and turpal (from tarpaulin) [7, pp. 32–33]. The entry for kanjihaus illustrates a hybrid formation: “cells” in a regiment, derived from kanji (the prisoners’ diet of boiled rice water) combined with the English word house [7, p. 33].

At the comparative-philological level, R. J. Wilkinson’s 1895 article on Indonesian numerals surveys the comparative etymology of Indonesian and Oceanic numerals, drawing on the work of Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera and the Rev. D. MacDonald to argue that these numeral systems share a common origin rooted in quinary (base-five) counting [8, pp. 99–103]. Wilkinson presents a comparative table spanning six languages (Malay, Maori, Tagalog, Malagasy, Formosan, Fijian) to demonstrate the remarkable uniformity of the basic numerals 1–10 across a vast geographic area [8, p. 99]. The word lima/rima (5) still means “hand” in many Formosan and Polynesian dialects, and the Malay delapan (8) is derived from dua-lepan (“two turned down”), preserving the finger-counting logic [8, p. 100]. Wilkinson rejects MacDonald’s more radical proposal that the Oceanic numerals are of Semitic origin on the grounds that the phonological character of Oceanic languages is wholly unlike Semitic, that the Arabic numerals are not collective nouns and do not follow a quinary system, and that MacDonald’s specific etymological pairings are philologically unsound [8, pp. 101–102].

C. O. Blagden’s 1905 appreciation of Professor Brandstetter’s Malayo-Polynesian researches draws English-speaking readers’ attention to the German scholar’s strictly comparative linguistic methods, particularly his pairing of Tagalog and Malagasy [9, pp. 211–216]. Blagden uses these to demonstrate that Malay, far from being the “normal type” of a Malayan language as Crawfurd had maintained, is in many respects a simplified and reduced representative of the family [9, p. 212]. He illustrates this with the verb for “writing” (Malay surat, Tagalog sulat, Malagasy soratra), showing how Tagalog and Malagasy preserve a full system of agglutination—prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and reduplication—whereas Malay has reduced it to a mere remnant [9, pp. 212–213]. The comparative vocabulary indicates that the primitive Malayo-Polynesian ancestors were at home on tropical seas, with common words for sea, shore, crocodile, prawn, ray, and dugong; they used sails and fishing hooks, knew rice, yams, bamboo, cocoanut, and screw-palm; possessed knowledge of iron and apparently silver; and had houses with walls and roofs, pots, dishes, spoons, and mortars with pestles [9, p. 214].

G. E. Marrison’s 1975 article on the early Cham language examines Cham epigraphic texts from the fourth to the late tenth century A.D. to demonstrate that the early Cham language was closely affiliated with Malay in phonology, vocabulary, and syntax, and that the later divergence of Cham from the Indonesian family was driven primarily by Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer contact [10, pp. 52–59]. The undated Dong-yen-chau inscription, attributed to the late fourth century A.D. on palaeographic grounds, is the oldest surviving example of an Indonesian language; more than half its words are cognate with Malay [10, p. 53]. The Cham word asuv (‘dog’) preserves the Common Indonesian form asu, which is taboo in Malay and has been replaced by anjing, surviving only in the compound gigi asu (‘canine tooth’) [10, p. 57].

Natural Science Terms and Lexicographic Practice

The documentation of Malay natural science terminology and the practice of lexicography itself form a further strand. A. W. Hamilton, with botanical determinations by R. E. Holttum, published a 1933 glossary documenting Malay vernacular names for cultivated ornamental plants across the Straits Settlements and Malay states [11, pp. 139–143]. The entries collectively demonstrate that the Malay ornamental garden was not a closed indigenous system but a highly syncretic assemblage in which locally named plants of foreign origin had been fully naturalised into Malay cultural practice. At least four Malay plant names are explicitly derived from Chinese: Kekwa (chrysanthemum) from Kek Hoa, Kimbong (balsam) from Kim Hong, Goyap (pink) from go hiap, and Kengwa (night-blooming cereus) from Keng Hoa [11, pp. 139–143]. Regional naming variation was systematic: the same plant bore distinct names in Kedah, Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, as with Chempa/Chempaka (champaca), Telukis/Goyap (pink), and Rompok/Melor jawa (Clerodendron fragrans) [11, pp. 139–141].

M. J. Manning’s 1956 commentary on the Malay Word Count, 1952 represents an early application of corpus-based methodology to Malay lexicography [12, pp. 37–48]. The survey examined a total of 22 million words (22 counters × 1 million each) and recorded only 3,854 distinct words, a figure Manning finds surprisingly small given that the Wilkinson and Winstedt dictionaries each contain 9,000–10,000 entries [12, pp. 37–40]. Manning’s most damaging observation is a direct comparison of two adjacent counters: Counter No. 15 produced a total frequency of 34,064 words while Counter No. 16 produced only 2,338, despite covering a comparable number of distinct words (197 versus 196) [12, pp. 42–43]. Manning proposes a replacement methodology of ten categories of 100,000 words each, including a separate list for recorded colloquial Malay and another for “Modern Abstract Writing,” arguing that such a categorised approach is essential for Malay specifically because the language’s register system (Bahasa Dalam, Bahasa Halus, Literary, Colloquial, Bazaar) means that word frequency is inseparable from occasion and style [12, pp. 46–47].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on languages reveals a discipline that shifted in focus and method across its history. The earliest work, from the 1880s and 1890s, was dominated by practical lexicography and comparative vocabulary: Haynes’s trilingual Sulu-Malay-English list [6], Blagden’s comparative study of aboriginal dialects [1], and Wilkinson’s review of Indonesian numerals [8]. These works were typically produced by colonial administrators or missionaries with limited formal training in philology, and they drew heavily on published vocabularies and short field collections rather than sustained linguistic fieldwork.

The first decade of the twentieth century saw a maturation of method. Moulton’s expedition vocabulary [2], Haynes’s Brunei-Malay list [3], and Shellabear’s systematic description of Baba Malay [5] all reflect a growing awareness of the need for consistent documentation, comparative annotation, and the recognition of contact varieties as legitimate objects of study in their own right. The 1921 Marshall-Moulton vocabulary of Brunei Malay [4] represents the high point of this comparative-lexical approach, with its systematic annotation against Sarawak Malay and Wilkinson’s dictionary.

The interwar and post-war periods introduced new methodological concerns. Hamilton’s 1919 article on foreign loan words [7] shifted attention from the ultimate source language to the immediate vector of transmission, a historiographical intervention that reframed the borrowing question. Manning’s 1956 commentary [12] introduced corpus-based frequency analysis and register theory, anticipating modern computational approaches by decades. Marrison’s 1975 study of early Cham [10] brought epigraphic evidence to bear on the comparative history of the Indonesian family, extending the chronological depth of the evidence well beyond the range of Malay textual sources. Throughout this trajectory, the literature maintained its characteristic dual character: part practical reference for administrators and educators, part contribution to the broader comparative-linguistic understanding of the Malayo-Polynesian family.

Notes on individual Malay words

Natural science terms

Peninsular dialects

Borneo and Sumatra

Brunei and other Borneo dialects

Malay-Polynesian

Foreign words in Malay

Dictionaries, glossaries, vocabularies

Chinese

MBRAS Sources

Malay

Notes on individual Malay Words

Peninsular Dialects

Dictionaries, glossaries, vocabularies

Spelling

Technical terms

Natural science terms

Borneo and Sumatra

Brunei and other Borneo dialects

Foreign words in Malay

Malay-Polynesian

References

  1. C.O. Blagden (1894). Early Indo-Chinese influence in the Malay Peninsula, as illustrated by some of the dialects of the aboriginal tribes JSBRAS 27: 21–56. Read on JSTOR
  2. J.C. Moulton (1912). Some words in use among the natives met on the journey to Batu Lawi JSBRAS 63: 100–104.
  3. Haynes A.S (1900). A list of Brunei-Malay words JSBRAS 34: 39–48.
  4. H.B. Marshall (1921). A vocabulary of Brunei Malay JSBRAS 83: 45–74.
  5. W.G. Shellabear (1913). Baba Malay: an introduction to the language of the Straits-born Chinese JSBRAS 65: 40–63. Read on JSTOR
  6. Haynes T.H (1886). English, Sulu and Malay vocabulary JSBRAS 18: 191–239.
  7. Hamilton A.W (1919). Hindustani, Tamil, Sanskrit and other loan words in Malay JSBRAS 80: 29–38. Read on JSTOR
  8. R.J. Wilkinson (1895). The Indonesian numerals JSBRAS 28: 99–103.
  9. C.O. Blagden (1905). Dr. Brandstetter’s Malayo-Polynesian researches: an appreciation JSBRAS 42: 211–216. Read on JSTOR
  10. G.E. Marrison (1975). The early Cham language, and its relationship to Malay JMBRAS 48(2): 52–59.
  11. Hamilton A.W (1933). A Malay garden. With botanical determinations. R.E. Holttum JMBRAS 11(2): 139–143.
  12. M.J. Manning (1956). Comment on the Malay word count, 1952 JMBRAS 29(1): 37–48. Read on JSTOR