Malay is a group of languages closely related to each other to the point of mutual intelligibility but that linguists consider to be separate languages. They are grouped into a group called "Local Malay", part of a larger group called "Malayan" within the
Malayo-Polynesian branch of the
Austronesian language family. The various forms of Malay are spoken in
Brunei,
Indonesia (where the national language,
Indonesian, is a variety of it),
Malaysia,
Singapore,
Philippines, and southern
Thailand.
Malay is the
official language of
Brunei and is the national language of
Singapore. It was also formerly the official language of Malaysia. The national language of
Indonesia is Indonesian, formally referred to as
Bahasa Indonesia which literally translates as "
Indonesian language". It is also called
Bahasa Nasional (National Language) and
Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu (Unifying Language) in Indonesia. Indonesian is also used in
East Timor, a consequence of more than 20 years of Indonesian administration and is now a "
working language" of that country. In Malaysia, the language is now officially known as
Bahasa Malaysia ("Malaysian language"), though constitutionally it is called
Bahasa Melayu or BM for short. Malaysians use the term Malay to refer not to the language but to an ethnic group i.e. those who are Muslim. Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand refer to the language as
Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language").
Origin
There are many hypotheses as to where the Malay language originated. One of these is that it came from
Sumatra island. The oldest written documents in Malay, dated from the end of the 7th century AD, were found on
Bangka Island, off the southeastern coast of Sumatra and in
Palembang in southern Sumatra. "
Malayu" was the name of an old kingdom located in
Jambi province in eastern Sumatra. It was known in ancient
Chinese texts as "Mo-lo-yo" and mentioned in the
Nagarakertagama, an old
Javanese epic written in 1365, as one of the "tributary states" of the
Majapahit kingdom in eastern
Java.
The use of Malay throughout insular and peninsular
Southeast Asia is linked to the rise of
Muslim kingdoms and the spread of
Islam, itself a consequence of growing regional trade.
Indonesia pronounced a variety of Malay its official language when it gained
independence, calling it
Bahasa Indonesia. However, the language had already been used as the
lingua franca throughout the archipelago since the 15th century. Since 1928, nationalists and young people throughout the Indonesian archipelago declared it to be Indonesia's only official language, as proclaimed in the
Sumpah Pemuda "Youth Vow." Thus Indonesia was the first country to designate it as an official language. In several parts of Indonesia, in
Sumatra and
Borneo Islands, Malay is spoken as local dialect of ethnic Malays.
In Malaysia, the term
Bahasa Malaysia, which was introduced by the National Language Act of 1967, was in use until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to "
Bahasa Melayu," 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. However, at present day, Malaysians prefer to identify their national language as Bahasa Malaysia once again. Similar to Malaysia in the mid 1990's, "Bahasa Melayu" was defined as Brunei's official language in the country's 1959 Constitution.
Indonesian and Malay are separated by some centuries of different vocabulary development, partly due to the influence of different colonial languages;
Dutch in the case of Indonesia, formerly the
Dutch East Indies and
English in the case of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, which were formerly under
British rule.
Some Malay
dialects, however, show only limited
mutual intelligibility with the standard language; for example,
Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some fellow Malay speakers to understand, while
Indonesian contains a lot of words unique to it that are unfamiliar to 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
Hokkien dialect, which is mostly spoken in the former
Straits Settlements of
Penang and
Malacca in Malaysia, and the Indonesian Archipelago.
History
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.
Old Malay is unintelligible to a speaker of modern Malay. It was heavily influenced by
Sanskrit, the lingua franca of
Hinduism and
Buddhism. The earliest known inscription in the Old Malay language was found in Sumatra, written in
Pallava script and dates back to 7th century - known as
Kedukan Bukit Inscription, it was discovered by the Dutchman M. Batenburg on 29 November, 1920, at Kedukan Bukit, South Sumatra, on the banks of the River Tatang, a tributary of the
River Musi. It is a small stone of 45 by 80 cm.
The Malay language came into widespread use as the
trade language of the
Sultanate of Malacca (1402 – 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,
Persian and Hindi or Sanskrit vocabularies. Under the Sultanate of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognizable to speakers of modern Malay.
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 in
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
Palauan.
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.
Writing system
Malay is normally written using
Latin alphabet called Rumi, although a modified
Arabic script called
Jawi also exists. Rumi is official in Malaysia and Singapore, and Indonesian has a different official orthography also using the Latin script. Rumi and Jawi are co-official in Brunei. Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi script and to revive its use amongst Malays in Malaysia, and students taking Malay language examination in Malaysia have the option of answering questions using Jawi script. The Latin alphabet, however, is still the most commonly used script 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.
Extent of use and dialects
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.
Phonology
Note: this article uses the orthography of Malaysian Malay. For Indonesian orthography, see Indonesian language.Orthographic Note:
- The combination of is represented as ngg.
There are two
vowels represented by the letter "e", i.e. , and . Learners of Malay are expected to distinguish between the two sounds while learning each new word.
In some parts of Peninsular Malaysia, especially in the central and southern regions, most words which end with the letter
a tend to be pronounced .
Grammar
Word Formation
Malay is an
agglutinative language, and new words are formed by three methods. New words can be created by attaching affixes onto a root word (
affixation), formation of a
compound word (composition), or repetition of words or portions of words (
reduplication).
Affixes
Root words are either nouns or verbs, which can be affixed to derive new words, e.g.
masak (to cook) yields
memasak (cooks, is cooking, etc.),
memasakkan (cooks, is cooking for etc.),
dimasak (cooked - passive) as well as
pemasak (cook - person),
masakan (a meal, cookery). Many initial consonants undergo mutation when prefixes are added: e.g.
sapu (sweep) becomes
penyapu (broom);
panggil (to call) becomes
memanggil (calls, is calling, etc.),
tapis (sieve) becomes
menapis (sieves, is sieving, etc.)
Other examples of the use of
affixes to change the meaning of a word can be seen with the word
ajar (teach):
- dipelajari = being studied
- pengajaran = lesson, moral of story
- terajar = taught (accidentally)
- terpelajar = well-educated
- berpelajaran = is educated
There are four types of affixes, namely
prefixes (
awalan),
suffixes (
akhiran),
circumfixes (
apitan) and
infixes (
sisipan). These affixes are categorised into noun affixes, verb affixes, and adjective affixes.
Noun affixes are affixes that form nouns upon addition to root words. The following are examples of noun affixes:
(N) and (R) indicate that if a word begins with certain letters (most often vowels or consonants k, p, s, t), the letter will either be omitted or will undergo
nasal mutation or be replaced by the letter l.
Similarly,
verb affixes are attached to root words to form verbs. In Malay, there are:
Adjective affixes are attached to root words to form adjectives:
In addition to these affixes, Malay also has a lot of borrowed affixes from other languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic and English. For example
maha-,
pasca-,
eka-,
bi-,
anti-,
pro- etc.
Compound word
In Malay, new words can be formed by joining two or more root words. Compound words, when they exist freely in a sentence, are often written separately. Compound words are only attached to each other when they are bound by circumfix or when they are already considered as stable words.
For example, the word
kereta which means
car and
api which means
fire, are compounded to form a new word
kereta api (train). Similarly,
ambil alih (take over) is formed using the root words
ambil (take) and
alih (move), but will link together when a circumfix is attached to it, i.e.
pengambilalihan (takeover). Certain stable words, such as
kakitangan (personnel), and
kerjasama (corporation), are spelled as one word even when they exist freely in sentences.
Reduplication
There are four types of words reduplication in Malay, namely
Measure words
Another distinguishing feature of Malay (include Indonesian Malay) is its use of
measure words (
penjodoh bilangan). In this way, it is similar to many other languages of Asia, including
Chinese,
Vietnamese,
Burmese, and
Bengali.
Measure words cannot be translated into English. Examples are :
Part of Speech
In Malay, there are 4 parts of speech:
Function words
There are 16 types of function words in Malay which perform a grammatical function in a sentence. Amongst these are conjunctions, interjections, prepositions, negations and determiners.
Negations
There are two negation words in Malay (include Indonesian Malay), that is
bukan and
tidak.
Bukan is used to negate noun phrases and prepositions in a predicate, whereas
tidak is used to negate verbs and adjectives phrases in a predicate.
The negative word
bukan however, can be used before verb phrases and adjective phrases if the sentence shows contradictions.
Grammatical gender
Malay does not make use of
grammatical gender, and there are only a few words that use natural gender; the same word is used for
he and
she or for
his and
her. Most of the words that refer to people (family terms, professions, etc.) have a form that does not distinguish between the sexes. For example,
adik can both refer to a younger sibling of either sex. In order to specify the natural gender of a noun, an adjective has to be added:
adik laki-laki corresponds to "brother" but really means "male younger sibling". There are some words that are gendered, for instance
puteri means "princess", and
putera means "prince"; words like these are usually absorbed from other languages (in these cases, from Sanskrit).
Pluralization
There is no grammatical plural in Malay. Plurality is expressed by the context, or the usage of words expressing plurality, and by
reduplication when needed. However, reduplication has most of the time many other functions and meanings.
Verbs
Verbs are not
inflected for person or number, and they are not marked for tense; tense is instead denoted by time adverbs (such as "yesterday") or by other tense indicators, such as
sudah, "already". On the other hand, there is a complex system of verb affixes to render nuances of meaning and denote active and passive voices or intentional and accidental moods. Some of these affixes are ignored in daily conversations.
Word order
The basic word order is
Subject Verb Object. Adjectives,
demonstrative pronouns and
possessive pronouns follow the noun they modify.
Borrowed words
The Malay language has many words borrowed from
Arabic (mainly religious terms), Sanskrit,
Tamil, Persian,
Portuguese, Dutch, certain
Chinese dialects and more recently, English (in particular many scientific and technological terms).
Simple phrases in Malay
In Malaysia, to greet somebody with "Selamat pagi" or "Selamat sejahtera" would be considered very formal, and the borrowed word "Hi" would be more usual among friends; similarly "Bye-bye" is often used when taking one's leave.
Colloquial and contemporary usage
Contemporary usage of Malay includes a set of slang words, formed by innovations of standard Malay words or incorporated from other languages, spoken by the urban speech community, which may not be familiar to the older generation, e.g.
awek (girl);
balak (guy);
usha (survey);
skodeng (peep);
cun (pretty);
poyo/
slenge (horrible, low-quality) etc. New plural pronouns have also been formed out of the original pronouns and the word
orang ("people"), i.e.
kitorang (
kita +
orang, the
exclusive "we", in place of
kami);
korang (
kau +
orang, "you");
diorang or
derang (
dia +
orang, "they").
The Malay-speaking community, especially in Kuala Lumpur, also code-switch between English and Malay in their speech, forming
Bahasa Rojak. Examples of the borrowings are:
Bestlah tempat ni (This place is cool);
kau ni terror lah (How daring you are; you're fabulous). Consequently, this phenomenon has raised the displeasure of language
purists in Malaysia, in their effort to uphold the proper use of the
national language.
The following are some contractions used by Malay-speaking youths:
There are also words used by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) community which are unique to them. This slang is widely called,
bahasa nyah. For example:
Dictionary
There are not many different Malay dictionaries. In Malaysia, the
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP)'s Kamus Dewan dictionary is the chief arbiter for the language, and is considered the authority in defining Malay usage. Some other dictionaries are:
- Kamus Pelajar (Student Dictionary)
- Kamus Besar (Big Dictionary)
See also
