The missing second edition of C.H. Thomsen and Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir’s English and Malay vocabulary
This short note by John Bastin identifies a previously unknown copy of the second edition (1827) of C.H. Thomsen and Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir’s A Vocabulary of the English and Malay Languages, held in the National Library of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
Summary
Bastin addresses a gap noted by J. Noorduyn (1957), who stated that no copy of the second edition was known to him. Bastin reports that a defective copy exists in the National Library of Malaysia, printed at the Mission Press, Singapore, in 1827, with pages 25–32 missing due to a printer’s error that repeated pages 9–16 in their place (p. 11). The note also situates the work historically: the first edition was printed at Malacca in 1820, and the second edition was produced at the Mission Press, Singapore, which began operations after Thomsen’s arrival there in May 1822 (p. 11). Bastin notes the linguistic significance of the vocabulary as a record of early nineteenth-century Malay usage and of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir’s own working vocabulary, and identifies it as the first Malay dictionary or word-list printed in Singapore (p. 11).