Lingula

“ Ah, Lingo, Lingo! 'tis a hard case, a sorrowful case, a heart-aching case. I declare, Lingo, I could sit down and blubber; I could, botheration, I could!" and here the sympathetic counsel, to Lingo's amazement, burst into a loud uproarious laugh, such as he had never been known to give vent to before.
"The devil's in the man, sure enough," said Lingo. "But I see, I see," he muttered, surveying Affidavy sagaciously, "he has been blowing it a little too hard, and now he's getting a touch of the Horrors. Well, well, brandy's the best cure for that; and he shall have a snap at his own medicine." ”

“ I am very partial to this tribe of Lingga Dayaks; they have always shown so unmistakable a preference for the English—faithful under every temptation, and ready at a moment’s warning to back them up with a force of a thousand men. ”

“ The combination of letters ng is to be sounded as in sing, ringing, longing in English, and zang, bang, tang, boring, hangen in Dutch. A great many words in Sunda begin with this ng, the pronunciation of which to a beginner is rather difficult and perhaps can only be overcome by a little practice from hearing the natives pronounce it. Thus in ngang'ah to gape, the apostrope after the second ng' shows that the word must be prounced ngang-ah, and not ngan-gah. The ng being in reality one letter sound, for which no European language perhaps possesses an appropriate letter. ”

“ Yet those syllables which cost the children so many tears are of no use to them.
Those syllables are necessary only in the learning of Spanish, which language in my time only three boys in a thousand ever really learned. These three learned it in Manila, by hearing Spanish spoken, and by committing to memory book after book. I often wondered what was the use of learning it at all when in the end one spoke only Tagalog. But I kept my wonder to myself. I felt that to try to make reforms in the Philippines at that time would be to embark on a stormy voyage. ”

“ Lingga, name of an island on the East coast of Sumatra between Bangka and Singapore. It has a tall peak on it high 3604 Ehineland feet, which may have been fancifully taken for the Lingga, or Linga, C. 607, the penis, the phallus of Siwa under that emblem; according to the Hindu philosophy the Androgynal symbol of the creative power Brahma, to whom, as not being the living god but an agent or emanation of the supreme being, no temples are erected or dedicated. ”

“ Now, Lingo, you and I are friends. You're an honest fellow, Lingo, but, botheration, you're mortal. And so, Lingo, I shouldn't trust you too far, if Oran Gilbert came to the wall-gate, about the time of cricket-cry, chucked you over a purse with a matter of ten guineas or so in it, while you stood peeping at the key-hole."
"Oho!" said Lingo, staring at the attorney with that sort of perplexity which a stupid man betrays when endeavouring to fathom the point of a jest, which he is sensible ought to be laughed at; "Oho, squire, I see what you are after,—he, he, he!" ”

“ For the scholar unacquainted with Latin, the most serviceable work for learning Tagal is the Essay on Tagal Grammar (Manila, 1878) , composed by the Recoleto missionary and linguist, Toribio Minguella de la Merced, whose Grammar (in the same language) for the use of children (Manila, 1886) was adopted for schools by the Spanish government.
While another helpful work for the study of that same dialect is the Tagal catechism, by the Augustinian, Luis de Amezquita, a popular booklet, first printed in 1666, and (in its thirteenth edition) in 1880, at Manila. ”

“ The Lings of Seda Sheev are innumerable. The whole earth is replete with them; and whatsoever is visible is a form or species of Ling. Besides which, no place whatsoever is void of them; both Paradise and Patal are stocked with them; and all the Deivetas and Reeshes are occupied in their worship. And those who with complete devotion and entire faith have worshipped them, Bhegewan, for the gratification of such devotees, hath appeared and established himself there, at the desire of his votaries, with a Ling for each particular case of demand. ”

“ Aspirated consonants have arisen in the hving IN languages in the following ways :
I. They are found in WB's formed by the doubling of roots having h as their initial and an explosive as their final, as in Old Javanese hathat, "to take care", Bisaya hagliag, "texture". These cases are not numerous.
II. A few languages, like Tagalog, allow the combination of most of the consonants with a subsequent h, and consequently also that kind of combination which we call the aspirates. Hence in Tagalog a word like bugháw, " blue ",is just as permissible as a word like panhik, "to ascend". ”

“ For all that known dialects prove to the contrary, on the other hand, there may have been one primitive language, from which the descendant languages have varied so widely, that neither their words nor their formation now indicate their unity in long past ages, while, on the other hand, the primitive tongues of mankind may have been numerous, and the extreme uulikeness of such languages as Basque, Chinese, Peruvian, Hottentot, and Sanskrit, may arise from absolute independence of origin.
The language spoken by any tribe or nation is not of itself absolute evidence as to its race-affinities. ”

“ The Javanese language of ceremonious politeness changes kuraṅ, “too few”, into kiraṅ, by analogy with liraṅ, “half”.
31. One of the methods of formation of the Javanese language of ceremonious politeness consists in replacing
various word- endings by -jiṅ or -jěṅ: thus from esuq, “morrow”, it makes enjiṅ and from buru, “to hunt”, bujěṅ. I shall style this mode of formation the jěṅ-type. Now we find isolated representatives of this jěṅ-type in other languages also. Malay has a word anjiṅ, “dog”, Makassar a word tojeṅ, “true”, with e instead of ě. ”

“ In Hind. we have both līmū and nīmbū, which last, at least, seems to be an indigenous form. The Skt. dictionaries give nimbūka. In England we get the word through the Romance languages, Fr. limon, It. limone, Sp. limon, &c., perhaps both from the Crusades and from the Moors of Spain. [Mr. Skeat writes: "The Malay form is limau, 'a lime, lemon, or orange.' The Port. limão may possibly come from this Malay form. I feel sure that limau, which in some dialects is limar, is an indigenous word which was transferred to Europe."] ”

“ In Java, Sumatra, and other islands eastward in which Malay is spoken, the pronunciation and character of the language are much influenced by the other languages current there. Malay is only spoken in perfection in places where the natives speak no other tongue. ”

“ A week after our arrival we were divided among various provinces in order to learn the languages, and be able to minister to the Indians. I remained in the province of Manila, where I learned [297] the Tagálog language in company with others without much difficulty. If the grammar or other handbook were studied in Europa with the earnestness with which we study languages there, any person would become learned in a very brief time. Within five months we were all confessing and preaching, and in one year we were very capable in both, and in discussing the affairs of the Indians with them. ”

“ Capitan Tinong turned deathly pale at hearing so many words in um; such a sound presaged ill. His wife clasped her hands supplicatingly and said:
“Cousin, don’t talk to us in Latin now. You know that we’re not philosophers like you. Let’s talk in Spanish or Tagalog. Give us some advice.”
“It’s a pity that you don’t understand Latin, cousin. Truths in Latin are lies in Tagalog; for example, contra principia negantem fustibus est arguendum13 in Latin is a truth like Noah’s ark, but I put it into practise once and I was the one who got whipped. So, it’s a pity that you don’t know Latin. ”

“ All the dialects spoken by the Filipinos of Malay and Japanese descent have their root in the pure Malay language. After the expulsion of all the adult male Japanese Lake settlers in the 17th century, it is feasible to suppose that the language of the males who took their place in the Lake district and intermarried there, should prevail over the idiom of the primitive settlers, and possibly this amalgamation of speech accounts for the difference between the Tagálog dialect and others of these islands peopled by Malays. ”

“ Only one of the races named—the Malayan—is monoglottic. All the others seem to speak tongues with no genetic relationship, at least none indicated by etymology. The profounder study of language, however, leads to a different conclusion—to one which, as cautiously expressed by a recent writer, teaches that “every large, connected, terrestrial area developed only one, or scarcely more than one, fundamental linguistic type, and this with such marked individuality that rarely did any of its languages depart from the general scheme.” ”

“ Where nomadic tribes approach to a political organization, their language, though Turanian, may approach to the system of political or traditional languages, such as Sanskrit or Hebrew. This is indeed the case with the most advanced members of the Turanian family, the Hungarian, the Finnish, the Tamil, Telugu, &c. Many of their grammatical terminations have suffered by phonetic corruption, but they have not been replaced by new and more expressive words. The termination of the plural is lu in Telugu, and this is probably a mere corruption of gaḷ., the termination of the plural in Tamil. ”

“ Sinhala and Tamil shall be the languages of the courts throughout Sri Lanka and Sinhala shall be used as the language of the court situated in all the areas of Sri Lanka except those in any area where Tamil is the language of administration. ”

“ Many other, and more striking, examples of the lack of correspondence between race and language could be given if space permitted. One instance will do for many. The Malayo-Polynesian languages form a well-defined group that takes in the southern end of the Malay Peninsula and the tremendous island world to the south and east (except Australia and the greater part of New Guinea) . In this vast region we find represented no less than three distinct races—the Negro-like Papuans of New Guinea and Melanesia, the Malay race of Indonesia, and the Polynesians of the outer islands. ”

“ Original IN n. I. It mostly persists unchanged in the living languages. Original IN aṅin, "wind", is also aṅin in Old Javanese, Malay, etc., haṅin in Tagalog, etc.
II. Original IN ṅ becomes n in several languages; thus in Hova, save before a velar, hence in ánina, "wind". — It becomes ñ in several languages; thus in certain dialects of Tontemboan after i, hence Original IN and Tontb. liṅa > dialectic Tontb. liña, "to hear". — It becomes k in several languages by assimilation; thus in spoken Toba, hence Original IN baṅkay > written Toba baṅké > spoken Toba bakke, "corpse". ”

“ Even in Java living in the interior, surrounded by natives who speak the language as their mother tongue, it often requires, with many words, some judgment to select the right meaning, and words are current in different districts which are not known again in others, or which have a somewhat modified meaning, and are sneered at when used differently from what is usual with any particular set of people. ”

“ The Filipino people are not rendered a heterogeneous lot by having three different languages, Ilocano, Tagalo, and Visayan,13 which are respectively the languages spoken in the northern, the central, and the southern part of their country, any more than the people of Switzerland are rendered heterogeneous by the circumstance that in northern Switzerland you find German spoken for the most part, while farther south you find French, and near the southernmost extremities some Italian. ”

“ I. The lagu of particular languages. “The Sundanese are in the habit of speaking slowly and quietly, in a peculiar tone, lagu, which sounds singing and prolonged” " (Coolsma) . — “The Achinese speak rapidly” (Snouck Hurgronje) . — “The Puqu-m-Boto dialect is spoken in a tone that sounds more cheerful and is more prolonged, than the average Bareqe. The tone of the To-Lage dialect sounds somewhat proud and mocking, even in the mouths of slaves and children” (Adriani) . ”

“ Jantan and betina are also applied vulgarly to persons. If an apparent exception is found in such words as putra, a prince, and putri, a princess, derivation from a foreign language may be suspected. The inflexion in the word just cited is due to the rules of Sanskrit grammar.
Declension.
There is nothing in the Malay language which corresponds with the cases of a Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit noun, which are formed by changes of termination, or of a Hindustani noun, which are formed by postpositions. In Malay the cases are expressed, as in English, by prepositions:—
To, ka, kepada, sama. ”

“ We have learnt something, chiefly from a study of the modern dialects, which often repeat the processes of ancient speech, and thus betray the secrets of the family. We have learnt that in some of the dialects of modern Sanskrit, in Bengali for instance,4 the plural is formed, as it is in Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish, Burmese, and Siamese, also in the Dravidian and Malayo-Polynesian dialects, by adding a word 75 expressive of plurality, and then appending again the terminations of the singular. ”