The Spraeck ende woord-boeck (1603) — full title Spraeck ende woord-boeck in de Maleysche ende Madagaskarsche talen, inhoudende twaalf tsamensprakingen (“Speech- and word-book in the Malay and Madagascar languages, containing twelve dialogues”) — was the Malay-Madagascar dialogue-book and word-list published by Frederik de Houtman in 1603, composed from notes taken during his twenty-six months of captivity in Atjeh from 1599 to 1601. It is the foundational text of European Malay studies, and one of the earliest substantial European records of the Atjeh language-world.
Composition during Atjeh captivity
Frederik de Houtman interpreted his Atjeh captivity as a providential mercy: he saw in his imprisonment “de bedoeling des Hemels … om een beginsel (= begin) te wezen, daar door Gods eer en kennis … onder de Heidenen bekend gemaakt” kon worden — the intention of Heaven to be a beginning, through which God’s honour and knowledge might be made known among the heathen — for which he received “het verstand en de genade van de Maleische spraak, die in gansch Oost-Indië als een gemeene (algemeene) spraak is” — the understanding and grace of the Malay language, which in all the East Indies is a common tongue.
He recorded the fruit of that grace in the introduction to the Spraeck ende woord-boeck. The Madagascar part he learned from a native “die al 4 jaar met ons volk gevaren had” — who had already sailed with our people for four years. The Malay part he learned during his Atjeh captivity, from the everyday speech of the sultanate’s roadstead and court.
The twelve dialogues
The dialogues in the Spraeck ende woord-boeck were partly borrowed from a Flemish-French model, as the ninth dialogue proves: it is very un-Indian in tone, going on about “komt U warmen bij het vuur” (come warm yourself by the fire), the meal, and the use of napkins. The tenth dialogue has “Hij is van Ghent. In wat strate woont hij? Hij woont bij de nieuwe Kerk, waar het schild van Engeland uithangt” — He is from Ghent. In what street does he live? He lives by the New Church, where the sign of England hangs.
The Flemish-French model is the Vlaamsch-Fransch voorbeeld — a Flemish-French example or template — from which the structure of the dialogues was borrowed. The Malaysian content was then adapted to that template, producing the hybrid character of the dialogues: the structure and topics (fire-warming, the meal, the napkin) are European; the language is Malay.
The southern-hemisphere star catalogue
In his twenty-six months in Atjeh, De Houtman also observed the southern sky and added to his language-book “de declinatien van vele vaste sterren staande omtrent den Zuyd-pool voor desen tydt noyt ghesien” — the declinations of many fixed stars standing around the South Pole, never before seen at this time. The Atjeh captivity thus produced not only the first Dutch-Malay dialogue-book but also one of the earliest European star-catalogues of the deep southern sky.
Eight-year copyright and afterlife
The Spraeck ende woord-boeck had only an eight-year author’s right or octroy. After its expiry it was reworked by A. C. Ruil, whose work was later translated into Latin, and through that language into English. In England, the orientalist Thomas Hyde was, in the seventeenth century, the only scholar to cultivate the Malay language; in the eighteenth a Malay dictionary appeared, and in the early nineteenth two more — among them that of W. Marsden, the British colonial official known in the Archipelago from the English interregnum, “die hiermee de Hollandsche-Maleische woordenboek-schrijvers voor was” — who thereby outstripped the Dutch-Malay dictionary-writers.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, the Spraeck ende woord-boeck of 1603 is the foundational European document of the sultanate’s language-world — the first substantial European record of the Malay of the Atjeh roadstead and court, composed during De Houtman’s twenty-six-month captivity in the sultanate. The dialogue-book’s twelve conversations, partly modelled on Flemish-French examples but rendered in the Malay of Atjeh, fixed the sultanate’s lingua franca in the European record and shaped Dutch, Latin and English Malay lexicography for the next two centuries. The book also produced, as an appendix, one of the earliest European star-catalogues of the southern sky — a small additional fruit of the Atjeh captivity.
See Also
- Frederik de Houtman
- Cornelis de Houtman
- Death of Cornelis de Houtman at Atjeh (1599)
- Balthazar de Moucheron
- Sultan Aloeddin of Atjeh
- Acheh
- 1603
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter XXXII (“Het Kasteel van Verre. De brief op varkensvel in Atjeh. Bali en Holland één! Van Neck’s reis in 1600”), pp. 114–118 of the numbered-letter sequence. Cf. Atlas N.I. No. 46 en 47, bl. 16.