A Chinese Vocabulary of Cham Words and Phrases

Extract

This list of words and phrases is part of the same volume which contains the Chinese-Malay vocabulary published in Vol. VI, Part 3, of the Bulletin, and is arranged on a similar plan. It has, however, offered greater difficulties than its predecessor owing to the fact that, as compared with Malay, Cham is an unfamiliar language; and though Aymonier and Cabaton's Dictionnaire Čam-Français (published at Paris by Ernest Leroux in 1906) is a first-class piece of work, it does not seem to solve all the problems involved in this vocabulary.

The Cham language is spoken by a dwindling population in Southern Annam and a larger group in French Cochin-China, Camboja, and Siam. The latter group is now completely Muslim, the former contains a minority of Muslims and about twice as many adherents of a species of Hinduism. Sanskrit and Arabic loan-words are therefore fairly numerous in the dictionary, though few will be found in this vocabulary. Apart from such obviously foreign elements, the Cham language is a curious blend of Indonesian and Mon-Khmer; and scholars still differ as to which of these two is the fundamental and original factor. The difficulty is increased by the circumstance that the morphology of these two families of speech is very similar, both using prefixes and infixes which in some cases are practically identical. This, however, is not a matter that need be discussed here.