Sydney Parkinson's Sumatra list

[Roger Mills]

Consensus among my knowledgeable but non-professional correspondents seems 
to be: Hokkien and/or Southern Min.

Hmm, one would think that even in the 1770's the average educated Englishman 
traveling around the orient could tell the difference between Chinese and 
Malay.

Comment from a man of (Sino-)Malaysian origin: "the words are definitely 
Hokkien, albeit
> spelled oddly. "Jet" = [dzit] = sky, "gù" or "geuex" = [gwe?] = moon,
> "thee" = [t^hi:] = sky, "ho" = [hO] = rain, "hai" = [hai] (albeit in
> different tone from Mandarin) = sea. Definitely Hokkien. Some of the
> spellings are probably mishearings: "bwaclieu" = [bwa.tsiu] = eye/eyes,
> although contemporary pronunciation would have it as [battsiu]." 

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