Ebook: The Singapore triglot vocabulary: English, Malay, Chinese

Singapore: American Mission Press, 1891. — 105 p. The Chinese renderings by B.F. West, containing nearly 2,000 words.At the outset this vocabulary was designed chiefly for the use of boys who are learning English in the lower standards in the schools of the Straits Settlements, but as soon as the work of compilation was commenced it appeared advisable to so arrange the words that the book might be more widely useful. The great majority of boys in these Settlements learn English through the medium of Malay, not the Malay of the Malays, but what may almost be termed as dialect, commonly known by the name of Bazaar, Colloquial or Low Malay. Many of the words used in Colloquial Malay are not used at all by the Malays themselves, or are used in a different sense; it has however been necessary to admit such words and expressions into this vocabulary in order to make it useful in schools and among the Malay-speaking Chinese, but to distinguish them from pure Malay words the abbreviation (col) has been inserted after them.