The PREFACE.
l having had very little help to aſſiſt me, and not having had the opportunity of Converſation with any Malayo, ſince I begun this Work, nor in ſeveral Years before.
That the ensuing work may become the more uſeſul to my Country
Men, for whom it is designed, I thought my self obliged to give some
saccount how Lhave Spell'd the Maleyo Words, with our Letters, that
they may be the less liable to be mistaken in their Pronunciation: And
this /do sor the following Reason.
Thothe spelling ofeveryl anguage, which is written in its ovn Native Cbaracter ought to be the ſame, which the beſt Authors who have wrote in that Language have observ'd, in tegard those who were Masters of the Tongue, must needs knowbest the force of their own Letters, and with mhat Letters to express the sounds of their several words, and in this respect their writings must he our Rule, the Observation of which being that which Grammarians call Orthography. But in writing any Language in a Character, which is altogetlier a Stran- gertoit, uid only proper to some other Tongue, as if. Hebrer orerebich was to e vritten in English Letters, there this Rule wholly fails us. And therefore where this is done, its thie bufiness of him that Composes la Book, or writes but a Sentence, to set down the words of jhe Forreign Tongue in such Letters of bis ovn, as may best express the true sounds of the Language which he writes.As for Example, is I was to write these two Arabick Word Gul, which is in the Engliss Character Ab boona. that is Our Fether, and so if Our Father was wrote in the Arabick Cha- recter, it must be thus exprest 9). This lintimate, in regard this Rule altho it be lust and Reisonable it should be most strictly obletyd; vet in all the Histories and Books of Travels, wbich, bhave met with that have heen vritten in Englis, either through ignorance, carelesuess, or a senceless sollowing the corrupt Copy of Strabgers, it bas been hardly tiken notiie of: So that those Writers, when they have delivered us either che names of Rersons or Places, or some Proverb or. Sentence in the Lan- guage of those People, to which we are Strangers both to Tongue and Character (and theresoreithey have done it in our Letters,) they, have erformed it so slightly, not to say worse, that the Englisi Reader having read the words according as they iere spell'd in our Letters and Pronuncia- tion, has no more pronounced the Language, or the true sound of it, than the Jargon ofone of our Children of two Years old, is the true Eloquent Sound or Just Pronunciation of the Englisb Tongue, and this has pro ceeded not from his fault in reading, but from the Authors in writing those Foreign WWords so perversely. This
