7. The personal pronoun aku is commonly used by Malays among themselves. Europeans use sahya almost exclusively. Kami is but little used; it excludes the person addressed, and is therefore the correct pronoun to use in prayers addressed to the Deity.
8. The use of the 2nd person pronoun is avoided as far as possible. The name or rank, or the relation which the person addressed bears to the speaker, being substituted. Thus a Malay would say, “John is a big boy,” rather than “You are a big boy.”
9. Ia is seldom used in conversation. In writing, ia is generally used for the subject, and dia for the object. Orang added to the pronoun of the 3rd person forms the plural, but the plural need not be expressed unless ambiguity would arise from the use of the simple pronoun dia.
10. The Straits-born Chinese use the Chinese pronouns, goa, I, and lu, you, when conversing among themselves, and it has become common among Europeans in the Straits to use the pronoun lu when addressing the Chinese and Tamils. A Malay should never be addressed by this pronoun lu, which would be considered as an affront.
The Possessive Case.
11. When one substantive is placed immediately after another, the second substantive is in the possessive case. Thus:
baju raja, the king's coat.
Similarly a pronoun placed immediately after a noun is in the possessive case, as,
rumah sahya, my house.
12. The possessive case may also be formed by placing the possessive particle punya after either a noun or prononn; the noun or pronoun signifying the possessor then precedes the noun signifying the thing possessed, as,
raja punya baju, the king's coat.
sahya punya rumah, my house.
NOTE.―The first method of expressing the possessive case should be generally used, but when the object possessed is qualified by an adjective it is more convenient to use punya. The frequent use of punya, however, is a Chinese idiom, and, though common with the
