Malay language
As the Bahasa Kebangsaan or Bahasa Nasional of several states, Standard Malay has various official names. In Singapore and Brunei it is called Bahasa Melayu (Malay language); in Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia (Malaysian language); and in Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) and is designated the Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu ("unifying language/lingua franca"). However, in areas of central to southern Sumatra where the language is indigenous, Indonesians refer to it as Bahasa Melayu and consider it one of their regional languages.Standard Malay, also called Court Malay, was the literary standard of the pre-colonial Malacca and Johor Sultanates, and so the language is sometimes called Malacca, Johor, or Riau Malay to distinguish it from the various other Malayan languages, though it has no connection to the Malay dialect of the Riau Islands. According to Ethnologue 16, several of the Malayan varieties they currently list as separate languages, including the Orang Asli varieties of Peninsular Malay, are so closely related to standard Malay that they may prove to be dialects. (These are listed with question marks in the table at right.) There are also several Malay-based creole languages which are based on a lingua franca derived from Classical Malay, as well as Makassar Malay, which appears to be a mixed language.
| Malay historical of the Malay homeland | linguists agree on the likelihood being in western Borneo. |
The use of Malay as a lingua franca throughout the Malay Archipelago is linked to the rise of Muslim kingdoms and the spread of Islam, itself a consequence of growing regional trade. A literary language was established in Malacca. After the defeat of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511, the literary center shifted to the Johor Sultanate, and the literary language is therefore often called Johor Malay, though it is a continuation of Malacca Malay. When Johor was divided between British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (Riau), its language was accorded official status in both territories.
Indonesia pronounced "Riau" Malay its official language (Bahasa Indonesia) when it gained independence. Since 1928, nationalists and young people throughout the Indonesian archipelago had declared Malay to be Indonesia's only official language, as proclaimed in the Sumpah Pemuda "Youth Vow." Thus Indonesia was the 1st country to designate Malay as an official language.
In Malaysia, the 1957 Article 152 of the Federation adopted Johor Malay as the official language (Bahasa Malaysia). The name "Malaysia", in both language and country, emphasized that the nation consisted of more than just ethnic Malays. In 1986 the official name was changed to Bahasa Melayu, but in 2007 it was changed back.
Bahasa Melayu" was defined as Brunei's official language in the country's 1959 Constitution. It is also based on the Malaccan standard.
The Indonesian and Malaysian registers of Malay are separated by some centuries of different vocabulary development. This is, in part, partly due to the influence of different colonial languages; Dutch in the case of Indonesia (see Dutch East Indies), and English in the case of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, which were formerly under British rule. However, Indonesia and Malaysia largely unified their previously divergent orthographies in 1972, and they along with Brunei have set up a joint commission to develop common scientific and technical vocabulary and otherwise cooperate to keep their standards convergent.
Some Malay dialects, however, show only limited mutual intelligibility with the standard language; for example, Kelantanese or Sarawakian pronunciation is difficult for many fellow Malaysians to understand, while Indonesian contains many words unfamiliar to speakers of Malaysian, some because of Javanese, Sundanese or other local language influence, and some because of slang.
The language spoken by the Peranakan is a unique patois of Malay and the Hokkien Chinese, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca in Malaysia, and the Indonesian Archipelago.
The history of the Malay language can be divided into five periods: Old Malay, the Transitional Period, the Malacca Period, Late Modern Malay, and modern Malay. It isn't clear that Old Malay was actually the ancestor of Classical Malay, but this is thought to be quite possible.
The earliest surviving manuscript in Malay is the Tanjong Tanah Law in post-Pallava characters. This 14th-century pre-Islamic legal text produced in the Adityavarman era of the Dharmasraya Kingdom, a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that arose after the end of Srivijayan rule in Sumatra. The laws were for the Kerinci people who today still live in the highlands of Sumatra.
From the island of Sumatra, the Malay language spread to peninsular South-east Asia. The Malay language came into widespread use as the trade language of the Sultanate of Malacca (1402â€"1511). During this period, the Malay language developed rapidly under the influence of Islamic literature. The development changed the nature of the language with massive infusion of Arabic, Tamil, Hindi and Sanskrit vocabularies, called Classical Malay. Under the Sultanate of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognizable to speakers of modern Malay. When the court moved to establish the Johor Sultanate, it continued using the classical language; it has become so associated with Dutch Riau and British Johor that it is often assumed that the Malay of Riau is close to the classical language. However, there is no connection between Malaccan Malay as used on Riau and the Riau vernacular.
One of the oldest surviving letters written in Malay is letters from Sultan Abu Hayat of Ternate, Maluku Islands in present-day Indonesia, dated around 1521â€"1522. The letter is addressed to the king of Portugal, following contact with Portuguese explorer Francisco Serrxo. The letters show sign of non-native usage. This is because the Ternateans were, and still are, using a completely different language as native language: the Ternate language, a West Papuan language. They use Malay only as lingua franca for inter-ethnic communications.
Malay is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, which includes languages from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia. Malagasy, a geographic outlier spoken in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is also a member of this language family. Although each language of the family is mutually unintelligible, their similarities are rather striking. Many roots have come virtually unchanged from their common Austronesian ancestor. There are many cognates found in the languages' words for kinship, health, body parts and common animals. Numbers, especially, show remarkable similarities.
Within Austronesian, Malay is part of a cluster of numerous closely related forms of speech known as the Malay languages, which were spread across Malaya and the Indonesian archipelago by Malay traders from Sumatra. There is disagreement as to which varieties of speech popularly called "Malay" should be considered dialects of this language, and which should be classified as distinct Malay languages. The local language of Brunei, Brunei Malay, for example, isn't readily intelligible with the standard language, and the same is true with some varieties on the Malay Peninsula such as Kedah Malay. However, both Brunei and Kedah are quite close.
The closest relatives of the Malay languages are those left behind on Sumatra, such as Minangkabau with 5.5 million speakers on the west coast.
Malay is now written using the Latin script, although an Arabic alphabet called Jawi also exists. Rumi is official in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Rumi and Jawi are co-official in Brunei and Malaysia. Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi in rural areas of Malaysia, and students taking Malay language examinations in Malaysia have the option of answering questions using Jawi. The Latin script, however, is the most commonly used in Malaysia, both for official and informal purposes.
Historically, Malay has been written using various scripts. Before the introduction of Arabic script in the Malay region, Malay was written using Pallava, Kawi and Rencong script and these are still in use today by the Champa Malay in Vietnam and Cambodia. Old Malay was written using Pallava and Kawi script, as evident from several inscription stones in the Malay region. Starting from the era of kingdom of Pasai and throughout the golden age of the Sultanate of Malacca, Jawi gradually replaced these scripts as the most commonly used script in the Malay region. Starting from the 17th century, under Dutch and British influence, Jawi was gradually replaced by the Rumi script.
Malay is spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, parts of Thailand, and Brunei. Indonesia and Brunei have their own standards, Malaysia and Singapore use the same standard. The extent to which Malay is used in these countries varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Malay is the national language in Malaysia by Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia, and became the sole official language in West Malaysia in 1968, and in East Malaysia gradually from 1974. English continues, however, to be widely used in professional and commercial fields and in the superior courts. Other minority languages are also commonly used by the country's large ethnic minorities. The situation in Brunei is similar to that of Malaysia.
| Unlike other Southeast and Vietnamese, Malay | Asian languages, such as Thai isn't a tonal language. |
Related Sites for Malay language
- TheFreeDictionary.com - Malay - definition of Malay by the Free ... read Malay language
- Malay Language Audio Lessons Online - Bahasa Malaysia Online ... read Malay language
- Malay language - Definition | WordIQ.com - Dictionary ... read Malay language
- Learn Malay: Language-Learning Software & Online Language Classes read Malay language
