A Mid-Nineteenth-Century Arabic-Malay Vocabulary

August, 2023

Aglaia Iankovskaia

 

Source: Or. 3231(8), ff. 33r –32v, Leiden University Library

 

This month’s translation is found where it appears to be unavoidable and, more than that, essential—that is, in a dictionary. A word-by-word translation, solely possible one for a wordbook, it follows the interlinear pattern commonly employed by Malay translators of Arabic texts: written in smaller script, the units of translation are placed diagonally between the lines of the source. Containing not an authoritative Arabic text but a list of words compiled to be translated, the dictionary still appears to manifest the hierarchy between the two languages—the source and the target ones, Arabic and Malay—in its layout.This handwritten vocabulary is found in the Leiden University Library among the manuscripts collected by Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk (1824–1894), the well-known Dutch linguist and Bible translator. Dating back to mid-nineteenth-century Sumatra, according to the collection catalogues, it was apparently acquired by van der Tuuk sometime between 1851 and 1856 during his journey to the Batak lands via Padang and Sibolga. The vocabulary is titled al-Jadwal fī kalām al-‘Arab (lit. ‘A list in Arabic speech’) and occupies some 80 pages (ff. 44v–4r) of the manuscript Or. 3231, which contains also several other texts helpful to a learner of Arabic, i.e. three other Arabic-Malay vocabularies and texts on Arabic grammar. Only one of the vocabularies is arranged alphabetically, while the other three, including al-Jadwal, list Arabic words in thematic sections. The sections are largely untitled, mostly marked by an overlined word ‘section’ (faṣl), and the logic of the compiler can be only guessed from their contents. Unlike in the other parts of the manuscript, in this vocabulary the scribe does not use red ink to highlight the structure of the text.

Arabic words are put one after another in a line, little space being left between them. Their Malay translations hang hooked to them beneath, often exceeding the source in the number of words and length. The vocabulary is divided into three big chapters according to a grammatical principle: particles, nouns, and verbs. Within the chapters, thematical arrangement is applied. The chapter on the nouns takes an encyclopaedic form, commencing with sections on God’s names, religious, epistemological and abstract terms, and then proceeding to words describing the physical world: those for land and sky; geographical notions; inanimate phenomena and materials; spices and aromatics; food and drinks; vessels and household utensils; diseases; plants and their parts; water and fish; animals and insects; body parts; categories of people; clothes and furnishings. Often a number of synonyms is provided, their translation replaced by the letter mim under the line. Humans find themselves in the fauna section, after the word al-ḥayawān (‘animal’), which is translated to Malay as segala yang hidup (‘everything that lives’). They are classified according to their gender, age, and social roles: men and women, old and young, free and slaves, kings, ministers and warriors. Women are divided into maids, brides, widows, young and old, married and not, and a variety of kinship terms is listed, as well as other words describing interpersonal relationships: friend, enemy, neighbour.

The sloppy handwriting and somewhat messy structural arrangement of this anonymous manuscript leaves an impression that the vocabulary was not intended for any audiences. It rather resembles personal notebooks in which learners of foreign languages write down words learnt and to be learnt in an endeavour to systematise their knowledge. Apparently compiled by a Malay-speaking learner of Arabic somewhere in nineteenth-century Sumatra, this wordlist provides an insight not only into the language learning practices of the time, but also into the student’s worldview and mindset. Assembling the elusive foreign words in logically arranged sections, the scribe unwittingly describes the world around—in an encyclopaedic and largely intuitive way.

 

Source:

Or. 3231(8), ff. 33r –32v, Leiden University Library