Malay

(1) High-Malay : typical Polynesian; language of the peninsula of Malacca. See “Grammar and Dicty.” of Crawfurd, London, 1852; by Marsden, London, 1812; by Pynappel, by Hollander, Breda, 1864. (2) Batavian or Low-Malay . See “Handle i ding,” by Homan and Van der Tuuk. Zalt-Bommel, 1868. ⁂ Low-Malay is merely corrupt Malay, as introduced by Europe ans. The best vocabulary is by Badings, Dutch-Malay and Malay-Dutch, Schoonhoven, 1872. Batavian-Malay is a dialect of Sundanese , with an admixture of Balinese and other foreign words.     P. J. V.   (3) Dialects are known as Amboynese Malay , Menang Kabaw , or Sumatran Malay , A chinese and other Polynesian forms. ⁂ All languages spoken in the Indian or Malay Archipelago [except those of the Galela group], and not directly Papuan, are called “Malay languages,” and considered to belong to the one great Malayan family. More particularly Malay is the language of a nation spread over a great part of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and the archipelago of Rhio-Lingga, and which has founded many colonies on the coasts of Borneo and the eastern islands of the Indian Archipelago. Besides the common or so-called cosmopolitan Malay, it is spoken in a peculiar dialect, called the Menangkabau Malay, in the interior of Sumatra. Malay in a very corrupt form, disfigured by ignorance of the character of the language, and the arbitrary intermixture of foreign words, has become the ordinary means of intercourse between Europe ans and the natives of the Indian Archipelago. This is called Low-Malay, and differs in almost every locality. Malay is written with the Arabic character. Through the contact with Europe ans the use of the Roman alphabet is gaining ground. The affinities of A chinese are still very obscure, and we have no vocabulary of the native language except that in Marsden’s miscellaneous works; therefore Mr. Crawfurd errs when he calls A chinese (p. lix.) “a cultivated and written language,” for the literary language of the A chinese is genuine Malay.     P. J. V.   Malayalim , Malayalma . Dravidian : vernacular speech of Malabar, and other provinces of the Madras presidency; it is closely allied to Tamul , using an alphabet of somewhat similar character. It has stages; anct. and mod. Grammar by Peet, Cottayam, 1860; School Dicty., Man galore, 1870.