English k, but the syllable in which it occurs must be pronounced very short indeed, and the breath drawn in so as to produce the shortening of the sound. The apostrophe at the end of a syllable indicates a similar abrupt sound. Final h has also the effect of shortening the last syllable, but not more than half as much as final k.
In the transliteration of the purely Arabic letters no distinction has been made between ت and س ;ط and ح ;ص and ه; or ق and ﻚ. The other Arabic letters have been transliterated as follows:― ث th, خ kh, ذ dh, ز z, ش sh, ض dl, ظ tl, غ gh, ف f. The nasal letter ‘ain ع which changes its sound according to the vowel written with it, is represented by a rough breathing (‘) placed before the vowel. The purely Arabic letters given above are very generally mispronounced by Malays, dh being pronounced as z, th as s, and sometimes f as p, and z as j. Such words are given in the vocabulary under both letters in order to make it easy for the student to find them; thus idhin will also be found under izin, and thalatha under salasa.
Orthographic Signs.
As already stated, the inverted comma represents the Arabic nasal letter ‘ain. It is placed before the vowel which has the nasal sound, as in the words ‘alam, ‘ilmu, m‘alim, do‘a.
The apostrophe represents the Arabic sign hamzah, both at the end of a word as described above and also in the middle of a word between two vowels, where it indicates that the vowels must be pronounced separately; this is also the case where the short vowel sound is followed by another vowel, as in the words s‘isi, k‘atas, t‘akan, the hamzah being used in such cases in the Malay character. The apostrophe is further used to indicate an initial short vowel before the consonants m and n, as in the words ‘mas, ‘ntah, ‘nggan, etc.
The hyphen is used in this Vocabulary to show the division of the words into syllables, except where the division is marked by an apostrophe or an inverted comma or by the mark ' which shows where the accent falls, as described below. In ordinary writing the hyphen should only be used where a word is reduplicated, or to separate from the words to which they are attached those prefixes, suffixes and other particles which do not foum an integral part of the word itself; these are: the preposition k-, the abbreviated numeral s-, the passive prefix di-, the pronominal suffixes, -ku, -mu, and -nya, and the particles -lah, -kah, -nah, -tah. The preposition di is distinguished from the passive prefix di- by the absence of the hyphen.
