PREFACE.
This work, as its name implies, is intended as a practical aid to English-speaking people in their efforts to acquire a knowledge of the Malay language.
People naturally find it easier to grasp a new language if its grammatical construction is explained as far as possible in the same phraseology and on the same lines as they have been accustomed to in learning their own and other languages. This grammar has therefore been arranged mainly on the usual plan of the grammars of European languages, and all philological investigations and scientific theories of the language have been intentionally avoided, as being beyond the scope of a “Practical Grammar.”
By means of a progressive series of exercises, the attention of the student is directed chiefly towards the construction of Malay sentences. The advantage of this plan will be recognised when it is remembered that the chief object which most learners have in view is not to read Malay books, but to form sentences and to speak the language. The exercises should of course be written without any other assistance than the vocabulary which accompanies each lesson, and the mistakes made should then be corrected by comparison with the Key, which will be found on page 68 and the following pages. A short series of Reading Exercises are given at the end of the Grammar, but they are intended as examples of Malay construction rather than for practice in reading.
It is perhaps as well to caution the student at the outset against those corruptions of the language which have come into use to a great extent among the mixed populations of the large towns. The chief of these are the use of the verb kaseh or kasi
