MALAY PROVERBS Bidal melayu

MALAY PROVERBS Bidal melayu

AW Hamilton

and this is the last book from my order for Malay language , written again by A W Hamilton in a size of A5 and layout as wit the books bought and then returned back to Amazon . Tough not noticed anywhere in the book for who is the publishing company, there was only the printing company at the lest rear page in Milton Keynes. I decided to keep the book , as with some minimal research i did not find it in any online library

This is a book wit the most simple format with just a short into text and all the proverbs . What surprises me is the 'Romanization ' of the Malay text as it is uses the character ch instead of c (of ejaan batu ) and tak (from tidak )is written as ta’ .
That possibly means to me it has been written on end of 19th century or early 20th when Hamilton in between others founded a different Romanization system as Malays have today with ejaan baru

Ther are a total of ca 300 proverbs , each proverb is followed by a verbatim translation then by its meaning

I show here two examples

Aku bukan budak makan pinang
I am not a child of the banana eating stage
I am not a simpleton but of the mature age



Malu bertanya resat jalan
If shy to ask you will lose your way
If slow to question you go astray

Biar putih tulang jangan putih mata (dan kecewa???as a song says )
Better white bones than the white of the eye
Rather them shame it were better to die

I think that this book has not only invaluable information but also has a historical value as public domain that possibly cannot be found anywhere