The Malay language (ISO 639-1 code: MS) (Malay: Bahasa Melayu; Jawi script: بهاس ملايو ) is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who reside in Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Thailand, southern part of the Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor. Indonesian descendants in the Netherlands, South Africa, Madagascar, and Suriname speak this language. Their ancestors were taken to those places by the Dutch during the colonization time. After World War II, a huge group of Ambonese people of Moluccas Island in Indonesia moved to the Netherlands due political reason and have multiplied in the country. Besides these Amboneses, there are other Malay speaking people who gradually come to the Netherlands after the World War II. Furthermore, all Malay speaking people who have scattered in all over the world still speak this language. In the meantime, the language is approximately spoken by more than 400 million people.
It is an official language of Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, and East Timor. In Indonesia and East Timor, the language is formally called Bahasa Indonesia, which literarily means "Indonesian Language." It is called Bahasa Kebangsaan (National Language) and Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu (Uniting Language) in Indonesia. In Malaysia, the language is officially known as Bahasa Malaysia, which is translated as the "Malaysian language". The term, which was introduced by the National Language Act 1967, was predominant until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to "Bahasa Melayu," which is used in the Malay version of the Federal Constitution. According to Article 152 of the Federal Constitution, Bahasa Melayu is the official language of Malaysia. "Bahasa kebangsaan" (National Language) was also used at one point during the 1970s.
Indonesia adopted Malay as its official language upon its independence, naming it Bahasa Indonesia. Yet, the language had been used by the Dutch to unite the people of the Indonesian archipelagos during the colonization time and during the stay of the Dutch in Indonesia. Since 1928, the language has been decided by young people and the nationalists all over the Indonesian archipelagos, manifested in Sumpah Pemuda "Youth Vow," as the only official language of the Indonesians. Indeed a large degree of mutual intelligibility exists between Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia; yet, Indonesian Malay is distinct from Malay as spoken in Malaysia. The comparison may be like the American English for Bahasa Indonesia and British English for Bahasa Malaysia. In Singapore and Brunei it is known simply Bahasa Melayu. 'Bahasa Melayu' is specified as the Brunei's official language by the country's 1959 Constitution.
However, many Malay dialects are not as mutually intelligible: for example, Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some Malaysians to understand, while Indonesian tends to have a lot of words unique to it which will be unfamiliar to other speakers of Malay.
The language spoken by the Peranakan (Straits Chinese, a hybrid of Chinese settlers from the Ming Dynasty and local Malays) is a unique patois of Malay and the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca.
Classification And Related Languages
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 on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is also a member of this linguistic family.
Malay belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the family, which includes the Languages of the Philippines and Malagasy, which is further subdivided into Outer Hesperonesian languages and Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian of which Malay is a member. Malay's closest relatives therefore include Javanese, Acehnese, Chamorro and Palau (Belau), Gilbertese, Nauruan, Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan and Tuvaluan[citation needed].
Although each language of the family is mutually unintelligible, their similarities are rather striking. Many roots have come virtually unchanged from their common Autronesian ancestor. Many cognates are kinship terms, health, body parts and common animals. Numbers, especially, show remarkable similarities.
Extent of Use
The extent to which Malay is used in these countries varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Bahasa Melayu 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.
In Singapore, Malay was historically the lingua franca among people of different races and nationalities. Although this has largely given way to English, Malay still retains the status of national language and the national anthem, Majulah Singapura, is entirely in Malay.
Most residents of the five southernmost provinces of Thailand — a region that, for the most part, used to be part of an ancient Malay kingdom called Pattani — speak a dialect of Malay called Yawi (not to be confused with Jawi), which is similar to Kelantanese Malay, but the language has no official status or recognition.
Due to earlier contact with the Philippines, Malay words — such as dalam hati (sympathy), luwalhati (glory), tengah hari (midday), sedap (delicious) — have evolved and been integrated into Tagalog and other Philippine languages.
By contrast, Indonesian has successfully become the lingua franca for its disparate islands and ethnic groups, in part because the colonial language, Dutch, is no longer commonly spoken. (In East Timor, which was governed as a province of Indonesia from 1976 to 1999, Indonesian is widely spoken and recognized under its Constitution as a 'working language'.)
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