to make known their daily wants, the
necessity of defence and their superstitious feelings. They refuse to
adopt any of those expressions that their brethren of the plain have
learnt from other races, considering them as impure and perilous as the
people themselves. This is an implacable application of the maxim
"_timeo danaos et dona ferentes_" by folks who do not understand Latin
and who ignore the existence of the Greeks but who know thoroughly well
their stranger neighbours.

It is therefore vain to seek among the Sakais those poetical metaphors
and that flowery, figurative style of speech which is attributed by us
to all Orientals without distinction.

I am not a student or professor of glottology, contenting myself with
being able to speak one or two languages without troubling my head over
their origin, so I dare not judge upon the affinity more or less remote
of the not too sweet Sakai idioms with others, but there seemed to me
such a marked difference between the Malay and Sakai phraseologies that
I should have declared them to be absolutely distinct one from the
other.

However, the recent studies of the German, W. Schmidt, and the more
profound ones of the Italian, A. Trombetti, have proved that all the
tongues spoken by the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula as well as
those to be heard in the neighbouring isles are in connection with each
other.

The most part of the words used by the Sakais are of only one syllable,
polysyllables being very rare, and the way in which these accents are
shot out from the lips would make a foreigner decide at once that the
best method of translating their talk would be by a volley of shots.

* * * * *

For the curious and the studious I have here added a short list of the
words commonly used amongst the Sakais but as their language is totally
exempt from every rule of orthography I have tried as well as I can to
give a phonetic interpretation of the same.

Arm -- _glahk_

Arrow -- _grog_

" (poisoned) -- _grog mahng tshegrah'_

" (not poisoned) -- _grog pe' m tshegrah_

Bamboo -- _annahd'_

Banana -- _tellah'e_

Betelnut -- _blook_

Bird -- _chep_

Body -- _brock_

Born -- _egoy_ (_alphabetical sound of_ e)

Blow-pipe -- _blahoo'_