(2) The newer phonetic system, which disregards the fact that the language has been written in Arabic characters and seeks to reproduce the pronunciation of the educated Malay; a system which has been followed with varying degrees of failure and success by amateur native-born Chinese, by early voyagers, by the missionary press, by writers with an eye to popular needs and by scholars aiming at scientific phonetics.
The old Dutch method has been abandoned even by the Dutch in favour of the later system, which alone demands attention.
On the general principle of the modern system, there is nothing to add to what Dr. Snouck Hurgronje has written. ‘A purely phonetic system, to serve scientific purposes, inust be bound to one dialect and give a perfectly true image of its phonetic peculiarities. The semi-phonetic system that will fulfil practical requirements ought to give the average pronunciation of educated genuine Malays. So the texts of the most famous literary productions of the golden age of Malay civilization (sixteenth century A. D.), so far as they have not suffered from corruption, give us an image of the average pronunciation of Malay at that time. But this image is very imperfect, especially for the vowels, owing to the peculiar use of the Arabic alphabet; and besides that, the pronunciation of Malay has suffered many changes during the centuries which have elapsed since the gradual decay of Malay kingdoms. As political and literary centres lost their significance, dialects got increasing influence upon Malay style and orthography; the spreading of Malay over parts of the Archipelago widely distant from each other and without frequent intercourse, was very disadvantageous to the conservation of the unity of the written language andmade many dialects develop almost to separate languages. Our own period with its rapid means of communication makes the need of a certain uniformity in written Malay more. deeply felt than before. We cannot content ourselves with
